The Traumatic Colonel The Founding Fathers, Slavery, and the Phantasmatic Aaron Burr

"The Traumatic Colonelis a significant and unique contribution to early US studies, deftly synthesizing the recent historiography on the political economy of slavery in the construction of the US hemispheric empire. Innovative and original, White and Drexler locate Aaron Burr as the symbolic pivot for the representations that emerge politically around the repression of slavery." - Dana Nelson,author of Bad for Democracy "By considering how both neglected and familiar literary materials 'propose an Africanist presence as the object cause of desire,' White and Drexler expand existing notions of the contours of early American studies. In so doing, they provocatively decode the ways in which the 'Founders' functioned as a system of structuring fictions for the nascent Republic. The Traumatic Colonelis one of the most innovative interventions into our sense of early US cultural development in quite some time. It will have a major impact on the field, and profoundly shape work written in its wake." - Duncan Faherty,author of Remodeling the Nation "Studies of early America should be emboldened by Drexler and Whites attempt to approach questions of racial violence from such a refreshingly idiosyncratic angle." (American Historical Review)