Harriet Jacobs, today perhaps the single most read and studied black American woman of the nineteenth century, has not--until now-been the subject of sustained, scholarly analysis. This anthology presents a farranging compendium of literary and cultural scholarship that is sure to become the primary resource for students and teachers of Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The contributors include both established Jacobs scholars and emerging critics; the essays take on a variety of subjects from Incidents, treating representation, gender, resistance, and spirituality from differing angles.