The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier

Posted in Anthologies, Anthropology, Books, Census/Demographics, Gay & Lesbian, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, Teaching Resources on 2009-12-30 17:59Z by Steven

The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier

SAGE Publications
1995
512 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780803970595

Edited by Maria P. P. Root

In her bold new edited volume, The Multiracial Experience, Maria P. P. Root challenges current theoretical and political conceptualizations of race by examining the experience of mixed-race individuals. Articulating questions that will form the basis for future discussions of race and identity, the contributors tackle concepts such as redefining ethnicity when race is less central to the definition and how a multiracial model might dismantle our negative construction of race. Researchers and practitioners in ethnic studies, anthropology, education, law, psychology, nursing, social work, and sociology add personal insights in chapter-opening vignettes while providing integral critical viewpoints. Sure to stimulate thinking and discussion, the contributors focus on the most contemporary racial issues, including the racial classification system from the U.S. Census to the schools; the differences between race, ethnicity, and colorism; gender and sexuality in a multicultural context; ethnic identity and identity formation; transracial adoption; and the future of race relations in the United States. The Multiracial Experience opens up the dialogue to rethink and redefine race and social relations in this country. This volume provides discussions key to all professionals, practitioners, researchers, and students in multicultural issues, ethnic relations, sociology, education, psychology, management, and public health.

Table of Contents

The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as a Significant Frontier in Race Relations – Maria P. P. Root

PART ONE: HUMAN RIGHTS

  • A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People –  Maria P. P. Root
  • Government Classification of Multiracial/Multiethnic People – Carlos A. Fernandez
  • The Real World – Susan R. Graham
  • Multiracial Identity in a Color-Conscious World – Deborah A. Ramirez
  • Transracial Adoptions: In Whose Best Interest? – Ruth G. McRoy and Christine C. Iijima Hall
  • Voices from the Movement: Approaches to Multiraciality – Cynthia L. Nakashima

PART TWO: IDENTITY

  • Hidden Agendas, Identity Theories, and Multiracial People –  Michael C. Thornton
  • Black and White Identity in the New Millenium: Unsevering the Ties That Bind – G. Reginald Daniel
  • On Being and Not-Being Black and Jewish – Naomi Zack
  • An `Other’ Way of Life: The Empowerment of Alterity in the Interracial Individual – Jan R. Weisman

PART THREE: BLENDING AND FLEXIBILITY

  • LatiNegra Lillian: Mental Health Issues of African –  Lillian Comas-Diaz
  • Race as Process: Reassessing the `What Are You?’ Encounters of Biracial Individuals – Teresa Kay Williams
  • Piecing Together the Puzzle: Self-Concept and Group Identity in Biracial Black/White Youth – Lynda D. Field
  • Changing Face, Changing Race: The Remaking of Race in the Japanese American and African American Communities – Rebecca Chiyoko King and Kimberly McClain DaCosta
  • Without a Template: The Biracial Korean/White Experience – Brian Chol Soo Standen

PART FOUR: GENDER AND SEXUAL IDENTITY

  • In the Margins of Sex and Race: Difference, Marginality, and Flexibility – George Kitahara Kich
  • (Un)Natural Boundaries: Mixed Race, Gender, and Sexuality – Karen Maeda Allman
  • Heterosexual Alliances: The Romantic Management of Racial Identity-  Francine Winddance Twine
  • Ambiguous Bodies: Locating Black/White Women in Cultural Representations – Caroline A. Streeter

PART FIVE: MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

  • Making the Invisible Visible: The Growth of Community Network Organizations – Nancy G. Brown and Ramona E. Douglass
  • Challenging Race and Racism: A Framework for Educators – Ronald David Glass and Kendra R. Wallace
  • Being Different Together in the University Classroom: Multiracial Identity as Transgressive Education – Teresa Kay Williams et al
  • Multicultural Education – Francis Wardle

PART SIX: THE NEW MILLENIUM

  • 2001: A Race Odyssey – Christine C. Iijima Hall
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Race Law Stories

Posted in Anthologies, Books, Law, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Slavery, United States on 2009-12-09 17:55Z by Steven

Race Law Stories

Foundation Press
2008
624 pages
ISBN-13: 9781599410012

Edited by

Rachel F. Moran, Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law
University of California, Los Angeles

Devon Wayne Carbado, Professor of Law
University of California, Los Angeles

Race Law Stories brings to life well-known and not-so-well known legal opinions—hidden gems—that address slavery, Native American conquest, Chinese exclusion, Jim Crow, Japanese American internment, immigration, affirmative action, voting rights and employment discrimination. Each story goes beyond legal opinions to explore the historical context of the cases and the worlds of the ordinary people and larger-than-life personalities who drove the litigation process. The book’s multiracial and interdisciplinary approach makes it useful for courses on race and the law and Critical Race Theory both inside and outside the law school as well as for undergraduate and graduate courses in ethnic studies. Each story illuminates the role that the law has played in both creating and combating racial inequality. Race Law Cases, an edited collection of the cases discussed in the Race Law Stories, will be available as a supplement in 2008.

View the Table of Contents here.
Read the introduction here.

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Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History

Posted in Anthologies, Asian Diaspora, Books, History, Law, Media Archive, Slavery, Social Science, United States, Women on 2009-12-05 02:53Z by Steven

Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History

New York University Press
1999
416 pages
Cloth ISBN: 9780814735565
Paperback ISBN: 9780814735572

Edited by

Martha Hodes, Professor of History
New York University

Since pre-colonial days, America has been both torn apart and united by love, sex, and marriage across racial boundaries. Whether motivated by violent conquest, economics, lust, or love, such unions have disturbed some of America’s most sacred beliefs and prejudices.

Sex, Love, Race provides a historical foundation for contemporary discussions of sex across racial lines, which, despite the numbers of interracial marriages and multiracial children, remains a controversial issue today. The first historical anthology to focus solely and widely on the subject, Sex, Love, Race gathers new essays by both younger and well-known scholars which probe why and how the specter of sex across racial boundaries has so threatened Americans of all colors and classes.

Traversing the whole of American history, from liaisons among Indians, Europeans, and Africans to twentieth-century social scientists’ fascination with sex between “Orientals” and whites, the essays cover a range of regions, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. In so doing, Sex, Love, Race, sketches a larger portrait of the overlapping construction of racial, ethnic, and sexual identities in America.

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Race, Hybridity, and Miscegenation

Posted in Anthologies, Books, Media Archive, Philosophy, Social Science on 2009-12-04 06:20Z by Steven

Race, Hybridity, and Miscegenation

Thoemme Continuum
2005-06-30
657 pages
ISBN: 1843711044
EAN/ISBN13: 9781843711049

Edited by:

Robert Bernasconi, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy
Pennsylvania State University

Kristie Dotson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Michigan State University

Volumes 1 and 2 of this 3 volume set collect the major contributions to the scientific debate on the unity of the human race in the 1850s, focusing particularly on the idea of hybridity. Volume 3 republishes the major contributions to the political debate on miscegenation.

This set brings together very rare primary sources of two central debates in the USA from the second half of the 19th century and early 20th century. Many of the essays in all three volumes have not been republished since their original publication and are extraordinarily hard to find. Volumes 1 and 2 collect the major contributions to the scientific debate on the unity of the human race in the 1850s focusing particularly on the idea of hybridity, which since Ray and Buffon had been central to species definition. The main book-length contributions to the debate were recently republished in “American Theories of Polygenesis” (Thoemmes Press, 2002). However, alongside these books and feeding off them are passionate debates which helped to define scientific racism for that time, not only in the US, but also Europe, because to a certain extent Europeans were willing to defer to American observers for their knowledge of Africans and particularly the effects of racism. Volume 3 republishes the major contributions to the political debate on miscegenation.The term “miscegenation” was coined in the anonymous text “Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro”, now attributed to David Croly. Some of the works included are overtly racist in highly objectionable ways and serve to document a context that is too often ignored. A particular feature of this volume is the inclusion of works by African-American authors. Some of the authors and texts included have been forgotten, but even the better-known texts can be properly understood now they are restored to their context. The debates about hybridity and miscegenation are not only of deep historical significance, they are also of interest in the light of the contemporary rehabilitation of the idea of hybridity in the work of Homi Bhabha, as well as the current interest in the idea of “mixed race”.  The set comes with two separate introductions by editor Robert Bernasconi. These substantial essays (5,000-10,000 words each) record the history of the debates including reference to works not here republished, brief biographical information on the authors included, and insights into the larger intellectual and political context.

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The Idea Of Race

Posted in Anthologies, Anthropology, Books, Brazil, History, Media Archive, Philosophy, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science on 2009-12-04 00:08Z by Steven

The Idea Of Race

Hackett Publishing Company
2000
256 pages
Cloth ISBN: 0-87220-459-6, ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-459-1
Paper ISBN: 0-87220-458-8, ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-458-4

Edited by

Robert Bernasconi, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy
Pennsylvania State University

Tommy L. Lott, Professor of Philosophy
San José State University

A survey of the historical development of the idea of race, this anthology offers pre-twentieth century theories about the concept of race, classic twentieth century sources reiterating and contesting ideas of race as scientific, and several philosophically relevant essays that discuss the issues presented. A general Introduction gives an overview of the readings. Headnotes introduce each selection. Includes suggested further readings.

Table of Contents
Introduction

The Classification of Races

  1. Francois Bernier, “A new division of earth, according to the different species or races of men who inhabit it”
  2. Francois-Marie Voltaire, “Of the Different Races of Men,” from The Philosophy of History
  3. Immanuel Kant, “Of the Different Human Races”
  4. Johann Gottfried von Herder, Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Humankind
  5. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, On the Natural Variety of Mankind
  6. G. W. F. Hegel, “Anthropology,” from The Encyclopedia of Philosophical Science

Science and Eugenics

  1. Arthur de Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races
  2. Charles Darwin, “On the Races of Man,” from The Descent of Man
  3. Francis Galton, “Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims”

Heredity and Culture

  1. Franz Boas, “Instability of Human Types”
  2. Alain Locke, “The Concept of Race as applied to Social Culture”
  3. Ashley Montagu, “The Concept of Race in the Human Species in the Light of Genetics”

Race and Political Ideology

  1. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Conservation of Races
  2. Anthony Appiah, “The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race”
  3. Leopold Senghor, “What is Negritude?”

Racial Identity

  1. Linda Alcoff, “Mestizo Identity”
  2. Michael Hanchard, “Black Cinderella? Race and the Public Sphere in Brazil”
  3. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States.
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Interracial Relationships in the 21st Century

Posted in Anthologies, Barack Obama, Books, Family/Parenting, Gay & Lesbian, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2009-11-28 21:37Z by Steven

Interracial Relationships in the 21st Century

Carolina Academic Press
2009
160 pp
Paper ISBN: 978-1-59460-571-0
LCCN: 2009001612

Earl Smith, Professor of Sociology and Rubin Professor and Director of Ethnic Studies
Wake Forest University

Angela J. Hattery, Professor of Sociology
Wake Forest University

Interracial Relationships in the 21st Century is a unique set of essays—both personal and research based—that explore a variety of issues related to interracial couplings in the 21st Century United States. Edited by Earl Smith and Angela Hattery, professors of sociology at Wake Forest University, this volume brings together the leading scholars in both the social sciences and the humanities who explore interracialities.

The chapters cover a wide range of topics related to navigating interracial relationships, including a chapter by George Yancey and colleagues that focuses on the tensions around interracial relationships in conservative Christian churches, to the role that racism and patriarchy play in shaping intimate partner violence among interracial couples—Smith and Hattery’s own contribution. Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey A. Laszloffy focus on the children of interracial unions and their attempts to negotiate a racial identity. Wei Ming Dariotis uses a personal narrative to explore the discourse and cooption of the term “Hapa” by a variety of Asian Americans. And, Amy Steinbugler offers an examination of the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in her chapter on interracial, same sex couples. Other contributors include Kellina M. Craig-Henderson, Emily J. Hubbard and Amy Smith.

In light of the recent election of the first African American president, Barack Obama, himself a bi-racial individual living in a multi-racial family, this book could not be more timely.

Table of Contents

  • Acknowledgments
  • Chapter 1 • Introduction, Earl Smith & Angela Hattery
    • Interracial Marriage among Whites and African Americans
    • References

    Chapter 2 • African American Attitudes towards Interracial Intimacy: A Review of Existing Research and Findings, Kellina M. Craig-Henderson

    • Introduction
    • African American Attitudes towards Interracial Intimacy
    • Focusing on African American Attitudes
    • Research on African Americans’ Attitudes toward Interracial Intimacy
    • Variation within Race
    • Illustration: The HBCU Study
    • Concluding Comments
    • References

    Chapter 3 • Hapa: An Episodic Memoir, Wei Ming Dariotis

    • Introduction
    • Hapa: Community and Family
    • War Baby | Love Child (Ang 2001)
    • War Babies: White Side/Chinese Side
    • Hapa: Language, Identity and Power
    • Conclusion
    • References

    Chapter 4 • What about the Children? Exploring Misconceptions and Realities about Mixed-Race Children, Tracey A. Laszloffy & Kerry Ann Rockquemore

    • Misconception #1: Doomed to Identity Confusion
    • Reality: Racial Identity Varies and Can Change over Time
    • Misconception #2: Doomed by Double Rejection
    • Reality: Acceptance and Comfort Require Contact
    • Racial Socialization in Interracial Families
    • Individual Parental Factors
    • The Quality of the Parents’ Relationship
    • Parents’ Response to Physical Appearance
    • Raising Biracial Children
    • References

    Chapter 5 • Race and Intimate Partner Violence: Violence in Interracial and Intraracial Relationships, Angela Hattery & Earl Smith

    • Introduction
    • Interracial Relationships
    • Black-White Intermarriage
    • Theoretical Framework: Race, Class and Gender
    • Experiences with IPV in Interracial Relationships:
      • The Story
      • Race Differences in Victimization
      • Race Differences in Perpetration
      • Racial Composition of the Couple
      • African American Men and White Women
      • White Men and African American Women
      • Race, Class and Gender: Analyzing the Data
      • Conclusion
    • Bibliography

    Chapter 6 • Hiding in Plain Sight: Why Queer Interraciality Is Unrecognizable to Strangers and Sociologists, Amy C. Steinbugler

    • Sexuality, Interracial Intimacy, and Social Recognition
    • Research Methodology
    • Seeing Straight: Heterosexual Interracial Intimacy in Public Spaces
    • Exclusion and Affirmation
    • Heterosexuality as Visual Default
    • Queer Interraciality: Intimacy Unseen
    • The Privileges and Vulnerability of Social Recognition
    • Visibility and the Performance of Gender
    • A Broader Lack of Recognition
    • Analyzing Heterosexuality: Privileges and Problems
    • Gay and Lesbian Interracial Families: Hiding in Plain Sight?
    • Conclusion
    • Bibliography

    Chapter 7 • Unequally Yoked: How Willing Are Christians to Engage in Interracial and Interfaith Dating?, George Yancey, Emily J. Hubbard & Amy Smith

    • Introduction
    • Instructions on Interfaith Dating
    • Instructions on Interracial Dating
    • Christianity and Racism
    • Why Christians May Not Interracially Date
    • Procedures
    • Data and Methods
    • Variables
    • Results
    • Discussion
    • Conclusion
    • References

    Chapter 8 • Conclusion: Where Do Interracial Relationships Go from Here?, Angela Hattery & Earl Smith

    • References
    • Index
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    The Creolization Reader: Studies in Mixed Identities and Cultures

    Posted in Anthologies, Anthropology, Books, Media Archive, Social Science on 2009-11-28 02:15Z by Steven

    The Creolization Reader: Studies in Mixed Identities and Cultures

    Routledge
    2009-09-10
    416 pages
    Paperback ISBN: 978-0-415-49854-8
    Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-49713-8

    Edited by

    Robin Cohen, Professor of Development Studies and Director of the International Migration Institute
    University of Oxford

    Paola Toninato, Research Fellow in Sociology and Italian Studies
    University of Warwick

    Increasingly, ‘creolization’ is used to analyse ‘cultural complexity’, ‘cosmopolitanism’, ‘hybridity’, ‘syncretism’ and ‘mixture’, prominent and growing characteristics of the global age. The Creolization Reader captures all these meanings. Attention to the ‘creolizing world’ has enormous potential as a suggestive way of describing our complex world and the diverse societies in which we all now live. The Creolization Reader illuminates old creole societies and emerging cultures and identities in many parts of the world. Areas covered include Latin America, the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, West, South and East Africa, the Pacific and the USA. Our authors provide an authoritative review, conspectus and critique of many aspects of creolization. This book is divided into five main sections covering the following key topics:

    • Concepts and Theories
    • The Creolized World
    • Popular Culture
    • Kindred Concepts
    • The Creolizing World

    Each section begins with a brief introduction summarizing the key arguments of the contributors, while the editors provide a provocative and comprehensive introduction to the debates provoked by creolization theory. The Creolization Reader is multi-disciplinary and includes 28 readings and original contributions drawn mainly from history, sociology, development studies, anthropology and cultural studies.

    Table of Contents

    PART 1: CONCEPTS AND THEORIES 1. Creolité and the Process of Creolization 2. Creoles, Capitalism and Colonialism 3. Creolization and its Discontents 4. Creolization and Creativity 5. In Praise of Créolité PART 2: THE CREOLIZED WORLD 6. The Creolité Movement: Paradoxes of a French Caribbean Orthodoxy 7. Creolization and Creole Societies 8. Creolization and Globalization in Réunion 9. Ethnicity and Identity: Creoles of Colour in Louisiana 10. Creolization and Nation-Building in the Hispanic Caribbean 11. The Evolution of a Creole Identity in Cape Verde PART 3: POPULAR CULTURE 12. Calypso Reinvents Itself 13. Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art 14. Louisiana Creole Food Culture 15. African Gods in Contemporary Brazil 16. Architectural Creolization 17. Masquerade Politics PART 4: KINDRED CONCEPTS 18. Hybridity in Cultural Theory: Encounters of a Heterogeneous Kind 19. Mestizaje in Latin America 20. Conceiving Transnationalism 21. Conceiving Cosmopolitanism 22. Syncretism and its Synonyms: Reflections on Cultural Mixture PART 5: THE CREOLIZING WORLD 23. A Creolizing South Africa? Mixing, Hybridity and Creolization 24. Sacred Subversions? Syncretic Creoles, the Indo-Caribbean, and ‘Cultures in-between’ 25. Creolization in Transnational Japan-America 26. Creolization and Nation-Building in Indonesia 27. Swahili Creolization: The Case of Dar es Salaam 28. The World in Creolization.

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    Biracial and Multiracial Students: New Directions for Student Services, Number 123

    Posted in Anthologies, Books, Campus Life, Canada, Census/Demographics, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Teaching Resources, United States on 2009-11-24 21:10Z by Steven

    Biracial and Multiracial Students: New Directions for Student Services, Number 123

    Jossey-Bass an imprint of John Wiley & Sons
    October 2008
    88 pages
    Paperback ISBN: 978-0-470-42219-9

    Edited by

    Kristen A. Renn, Associate Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education
    Michigan State University

    Paul Shang, Assistant Vice President and Dean of Students
    University of Oregon

    Editors and contributors of this important work have designed it to meet the needs of student affairs professionals who have previously had few resources on which to draw in understanding the experiences and identities of mixed race students.

    Within a multiracial framework, the authors address the contemporary context for understanding racial issues on campus; several approaches to identity developments; experiences of students and faculty; and student services, programs, and policy, including a Canadian perspective.

    A substantial amount of literature addresses developmental and service needs of monoracial students of color (Asian and Pacific Islander, Black, Latino, Native American), Student affairs educators have observed an increase in the number of biracial and multiracial college students: students who have parents from more than one federally defined racial or ethnic background such as Asian-White, Latino-Black, or Native-White-Latino. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, this population is only going to increase. This volume is sure to become an indispensable resource for student affairs professionals serving the needs of this increasing student population.

    This is the 123nd volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Student Services, an indispensable resource for vice presidents of student affairs, deans of students, student counselors, and other student services professionals.

    Each issue of New Directions for Student Services offers guidelines and programs for aiding students in their total development: emotional, social, physical, and intellectual.

    Table of Contents

    Editor’s Notes

    1. An Introduction to Social and Historical Factors Affecting Multiracial College Students (Paul Shang)
      This chapter introduces the volume by describing social and higher education challenges that impact the identities and experiences of traditional age biracial and multiracial college students.
    2. Research on Biracial and Multiracial Identity Development: Overview and Synthesis (Kristen A. Renn)
      This chapter presents three main bodies of research on identity development of biracial and multiracial college students: foundational theories, ecological models, and psychological studies of the impact of multiracial identity.
    3. Exploring the Experiences and Self-Labeling of Mixed-Race Individuals with Two Minority Parents (Donna M. Talbot)
      A student development researcher describes a qualitative study of ten mixed-race young adults whose parents are from different minority monoracial groups (Black, Latino/Hispanic, Asian, or Native American).
    4. Student Perspectives on Multiracial Identity (Alissa R. King)
      In the context of research on multiracial student experiences, this chapter provides personal reflections of a multiracial individual on campus at a time when Who am I? and What are you? questions prevail.
    5. Multiracial Student Services Come of Age: The State of Multiracial Student Services in Higher Education in the United States (Michael Paul A. Wong, Joshua Buckner)
      The authors describe emerging services to serve multiracial students, the service traditions from which these services evolve, how they are staffed, and their relationships with student organizations.
    6. The Space in Between: Issues for Multiracial Student Organizations and Advising (C. Casey Ozaki, Marc Johnston)
      Based on research and experience working with multiracial student organizations and leaders, the authors describe the functions and challenges of these student groups and provide suggestions for student affairs educators who work with them.
    7. Being Multiracial in a Wired Society: Using the Internet to Define Identity and Community on Campus (Heather Shea Gasser)
      This chapter describes established and emerging technologies, including online social networking, blogs, and wikis, that affect how multiracial students form communities and express their identities.
    8. Bicultural Faculty and Their Professional Adaptation (Michael J. Cuyjet)
      An associate professor and graduate school dean describes the ways that minority faculty members, monoracial and biracial, must learn to be bicultural to thrive in the dominant culture of higher education at predominantly White institutions.
    9. Looking North: Exploring Multiracial Experiences in a Canadian Context (Leanne Taylor)
      A Canadian scholar describes a particular context for understanding mixed-race college student experiences outside the United States and raises questions for higher education policy and student services practice.
    10. Student Affairs and Higher Education Policy Issues Related to Multiracial Students (Angela Kellogg, Amanda Suniti Niskodé)
      This chapter describes student affairs policy issues that have particular impact on multiracial students, such as collecting and reporting data on student race/ethnicity, implementing campus programs and services, and enacting affirmative action.

    Notes

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    Family Values in the Old South

    Posted in Anthologies, Books, Economics, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Slavery, Social Science, United States on 2009-11-19 04:33Z by Steven

    Family Values in the Old South

    University Press of Florida
    2010-01-24
    264 pages
    6 x 9
    ISBN 13: 978-0-8130-3418-8
    ISBN 10: 0-8130-3418-3

    Edited by

    Craig Thompson Friend, Associate Professor of History
    North Carolina State University

    Anya Jabour, Professor of History
    University of Montana

    This collection of essays on family life in the nineteenth-century American South reevaluates the concept of family by looking at mourning practices, farming practices, tavern life, houses divided by politics, and interracial marriages. Individual essays examine cross-plantation marriages among slaves, white orphanages, childhood mortality, miscegenation and inheritance, domestic activities such as sewing, and same-sex relationships.

    Editors Craig Thompson Friend and Anya Jabour have collected work from a range of diverse and innovative historians. The volume uncovers more about Southern family life and values than we have previously known and raises new questions about how Southerners conceptualized family–from demographic structures, power relations, and gender roles to the relationship of family to society. In three sections, these ten essays explore the definition of family in the nineteenth-century South, examine the economics of family life, both rural and urban, and ultimately answer the question “what did family mean in the Old South?”

    Contains:

    “A View of a Will: Miscegenation, Inheritance, and Family in Civil War-Era Charleston” by Kevin Noble Maillard.

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    Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture

    Posted in Anthologies, Books, History, Media Archive, Slavery, Social Science, United States, Virginia on 2009-11-19 02:19Z by Steven

    Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture

    University of Virginia Press
    1999
    325 pages
    6 x 9
    ISBN: 0-8139-1919-3

    Edited by

    Jan Ellen Lewis
    Rutgers University

    Peter S. Onuf
    University of Virginia

    The publication of DNA test results showing that Thomas Jefferson was probably the father of one of his slave Sally Hemings‘s children has sparked a broad but often superficial debate. The editors of this volume have assembled some of the most distinguished American historians, including three Pulitzer Prize winners, and other experts on Jefferson, his times, race, and slavery. Their essays reflect the deeper questions the relationship between Hemings and Jefferson has raised about American history and national culture.

    The DNA tests would not have been conducted had there not already been strong historical evidence for the possibility of a relationship. As historians from Winthrop D. Jordan to Annette Gordon-Reed have argued, much more is at stake in this liaison than the mere question of paternity: historians must ask themselves if they are prepared to accept the full implications of our complicated racial history, a history powerfully shaped by the institution of slavery and by sex across the color line.

    How, for example, does it change our understanding of American history to place Thomas Jefferson in his social context as a plantation owner who fathered white and black families both? What happens when we shift our focus from Jefferson and his white family to Sally Hemings and her children? How do we understand interracial sexual relationships in the early republic and in our own time? Can a renewed exploration of the contradiction between Jefferson’s life as a slaveholder and his libertarian views yield a clearer understanding of the great political principles he articulated so eloquently and that Americans cherish? Are there moral or political lessons to be learned from the lives of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings and the way that historians and the public have attempted to explain their liaison?

    Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture promises an open-ended discussion on the living legacy of slavery and race relations in our national culture.

    Contributors:

    Annette Gordon-Reed, New York Law School
    Rhys Isaac, College of William and Mary
    Winthrop D. Jordan, University of Mississippi
    Jan Ellen Lewis, Rutgers University, Newark
    Philip D. Morgan, Institute of Early American History and Culture
    Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia
    Jack N. Rakove, Stanford University
    Joshua Rothman, University of Virginia
    Werner Sollors, Harvard University
    Lucia Stanton, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation
    Dianne Swann-Wright, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation
    Clarence Walker, University of California at Davis
    Gordon S. Wood, Brown University

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