Staff Profile

Fionnghuala Sweeney specializes in American and Black Atlantic literature, history and visual culture. Her research encompasses African American literature; black book history, especially in the UK and Ireland; Black Atlantic autobiography/slave narratives; afromodernism; anti-colonial radicalism in diaspora; Slavery and Post-slavery Studies; eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth-century US literary studies; race and performance; Anglophone and Hispanophone Caribbean writing; Irish writing about slavery and empire; transatlantic studies, especially of fugitive and former slaves in Ireland and Britain; and Afro-diasporan art history and visual culture. She welcomes PhD projects in any of these areas.

Research Roles:

Co-Editor of Irish Journal of American Studies

Member of the organizing committee of the Irish Association of American Studies

Director of the AHRC Northern Bridge Consortium; Newcastle Director of Northern Bridge (to end Jan 2020)

Steering Committee of the Centre for Latin American Research

Editorial Board, Journal of American Studies

Advisory Board, Feminist Theory

Member of the AHRC Peer Review College (2008-2014)

Editorial Board, FORECAAST series in African American Studies, Liverpool University Press

Current teaching:

Level 1 Introduction to Literary Studies: African American Poetry 

Level 2 SELL 2205: Fictions of Migration 

Level 3 Special Subject SEL 3378: Landscapes of American Modernism

Level 3 SEL 3362: BA Dissertation in English Literature

MA SEL 8357: Radicalisms - Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Slavery

MA SEL 8417: MA Dissertation

• Articles

  • Baker B, Sweeney F. Black Bibliography as Biographical method. The Publication History of The Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery. Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 2024, 118(1), 47–78.
  • Sweeney F, Baker BE. ‘I am not a beggar’: Moses Roper, Black Witness and the Lost Opportunity of British Abolitionism. Slavery and Abolition 2022, 43(3), 632-667.
  • Sweeney F. Pretending to catch a mouse: photographing Paul Robeson, the aesthetics of risk and the modernist game. Slavery and Abolition 2020, 41(1), 167-185.
  • Sweeney F, Baker BE. Moses Roper, the First Fugitive Slave Lecturer in Ireland, 1838. Journal of the Irish Association of American Studies 2020, (9).
  • Sweeney F. Common Ground: Positioning Ireland within studies of slavery, antislavery and empire. Slavery and Abolition 2016, 37(3), 505-520.
  • Sweeney F. 'Beautiful, radiant things': Aesthetics, experience and feminist practice. A Response to Kathy Davis. Feminist Theory 2015, 16(1), 27-30.
  • Sweeney F. "It Will Come at Last": Acts of Emancipation in the Art, Culture and Politics of the Black Diaspora. Journal of American Studies 2015, 49(2), 225-239.
  • Sweeney F. Interview with writer Tim Jeal: Travel writing, Victorian explorers and modern narratives about slavery. Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies 2014, 35(1), 58-73.
  • Sweeney F. Memory, Mobility, Modernity: Archibald Motley's Portraits and the Art of ‘Serious Painting’. Slavery & Abolition 2013, 34(2), 236-251.
  • Sweeney F. Visual Culture and Fictive Technique in Frederick Douglass’ The Heroic Slave. Slavery & Abolition 2012, 33(2), 305-320.
  • Sweeney F, Rice A. Liberating Sojourns? African Americans and Transatlantic Abolition 1845-1865. Slavery & Abolition 2012, 33(2), 181-189.
  • Sweeney F. The Haitian Play: CLR James’ Toussaint Louverture, 1936. International Journal of Francophone Studies 2011, 14(1-2), 143-163.
  • Sweeney F, Marsh K. Introduction: Afromodernisms: Modernity, Paris and the Atlantic world. International Journal of Francophone Studies 2011, 14(1-2), 11-24.
  • Sweeney F. Other Peoples' History: Slavery, Refuge and Irish Citizenship in Dónal O Kelly's The Cambria. Slavery and Abolition 2008, (29.2), 279-292.
  • Sweeney F. The Black Atlantic, American Studies and the Politics of the Postcolonial. Comparative American Studies 2006, 4.2, 115-133.
  • Sweeney F. Atlantic Countercultures and the Networked Text: Juan Francisco Manzano, RR Madden and the Cuban Slave Narrative. Forum for Modern Language Studies 2004, 40(4), 401-114.
  • Sweeney F. Domestic Institutions: Transatlantic Gender Politics and Economic Power in Frederick Douglass' Variant Narratives. Slavery and Abolition 2002, 23(3), 59-72.
  • Sweeney F. The Republic of Letters: Frederick Douglass, Ireland and the Irish Narratives. Éire-Ireland 2001, 36(1-2), 47-55.

• Authored Books

  • Dolowitz D, Buckler S, Sweeney F. Researching Online. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008.
  • Sweeney F. Frederick Douglass and the Atlantic World. Liverpool and Chicago: Liverpool University Press, 2007.

• Bibliography

  • Baker B, Sweeney F. A Bibliography of Editions of Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery. The Bibliographical Society of America 2024. In Press.

• Book Chapters

  • Sweeney F. Modernist biography and the question of manhood. Eslanda Goode Robeson’s Paul Robeson, Negro. In: Farebrother R; Taggert M, ed. Cambridge History of the Harlem Renaissance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp.144-158.
  • Sweeney F. Correspondence. In: Roy M, ed. Frederick Douglass in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp.318-328.
  • Sweeney F. Last Objects. Death, Autobiography and the Final Imprint: Frederick Douglass in Death. In: Bernier C-M; Lawson B, ed. Pictures and Power: Imaging and Imagining Frederick Douglass, 1818-2018. Liverpool and Chicago: Liverpool University Press, 2017, pp.143-166.
  • Sweeney F. The Chattel Record: Visualizing the Archive in Diasporan Art. In: Hannah Durkin and Celeste-Marie Bernier, ed. Visualizing Slavery: Art Across the Black Diaspora. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2016, pp.81-103.
  • Sweeney F. Letters from 'Linda Brent': Harriet Jacobs and the work of emancipation. In: Bernier C-M; Newman J; Pethers M, ed. The Edinburgh Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Letters and Letter-Writing. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016, pp.391-404.
  • Sweeney F. Literary Generes: Travel Narratives and Compilations. In: Miller, JC, ed. The Princeton Companion to Atlantic History. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015, pp.307-312.
  • Sweeney F. Douglass, Frederick. In: Edward J Blum ed; Cara L. Burnidge, Emily Conroy-Krutz, and David Kinkela associated eds, ed. Dictionary of American History, Supplement: America in the World, 1776 to the Present. New York: Charles Scribeners' Sons, 2015. Submitted.
  • Sweeney F. Introduction: Afromodernisms – Black Modernist Practice in Contemporary Context. In: Sweeney, F., Marsh, K, ed. Afromodernisms: Paris, Harlem, Haiti and the Avant-Garde. New York and Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013, pp.1-16.
  • Sweeney F. Other Peoples' History: Slavery, Refuge and Irish Citizenship in Dónal O Kelly's The Cambria (republication). In: Bernier, CM; Newman, J, ed. Public Art, Memorials, and Atlantic Slavery. 2009.
  • Sweeney F. "To Redeem Our Colonial Character:" Slavery and Civilization in R.R. Madden's A Twelvemonth's Residence in the West Indies. In: O Neill, Peter; Lloyd, D, ed. The Black and Green Atlantic: Cross-Currents of the African and Irish Diasporas. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp.178-193.
  • Sweeney F. Anna and Ellen Richardson. In: Finkleman P, ed. Encyclopedia of African American History: From the Colonial Period through the Age of Frederick Douglass, 1619-1895. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp.42-43.
  • Sweeney F. 'Mask in Motion': Dialect Spaces and Class Representation in Frederick Douglass' Atlantic Rhetoric. In: Braxton, J; Diedrich, M, ed. Monuments of the Black Atlantic: Slavery and Memory. Muenster: Litverlag, 2004.
  • Sweeney F. The Republic of Letters: Frederick Douglass, Ireland and the Irish Narratives (republication). In: Kenny, K, ed. New Directions in Irish American History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.

• Edited Books

  • Sweeney F, Stuart M, Dillane F, ed. Special Issue: Ireland, Slavery, Antislavery, Empire. Slavery and Abolition, 2016.
  • Sweeney F, Salt K, ed. 'Acts of Emancipation'. Special Issue of Journal of American Studies 49.1. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
  • Stuart M, Sweeney F, Dillane F, ed. Maintaining a Place: Conditions of Metaphor in Modern American Literature. Dublin: UCD Press, 2014.
  • Sweeney F, Marsh K, ed. Afromodernisms: Paris, Harlem, Haiti and the Avant-Garde. New York and Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
  • Sweeney F, Rice A, ed. African Americans and Transatlantic Reform, 1845-1865. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012.
  • Sweeney F, Marsh M, ed. 'Afromodernisms': Special Double Issue of International Journal of Francophone Studies, vol. 14, issues 1-2. Intellect Ltd, 2011.

• Online Publication

  • Sweeney F. Purchase of Frederick Douglass. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.46527.

• Report

  • Rothwell C. . 2016.

• Review

  • Bernier CM, Lawson B, Newman J, Sweeney F, Trodd Z. Roundtable: Marcus Wood, The Horrible Gift of Freedom. Journal of American Studies 2011, 45(1), 165-183.