Author: Jennifer M. Spear
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801898781
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351
Book Description
Winner, 2009 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History, The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Historical Association A microcosm of exaggerated societal extremes—poverty and wealth, vice and virtue, elitism and equality—New Orleans is a tangled web of race, cultural mores, and sexual identities. Jennifer M. Spear's examination of the dialectical relationship between politics and social practice unravels the city’s construction of race during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Spear brings together archival evidence from three different languages and the most recent and respected scholarship on racial formation and interracial sex to explain why free people of color became a significant population in the early days of New Orleans and to show how authorities attempted to use concepts of race and social hierarchy to impose order on a decidedly disorderly society. She recounts and analyzes the major conflicts that influenced New Orleanian culture: legal attempts to impose racial barriers and social order, political battles over propriety and freedom, and cultural clashes over place and progress. At each turn, Spear’s narrative challenges the prevailing academic assumptions and supports her efforts to move exploration of racial formation away from cultural and political discourses and toward social histories. Strikingly argued, richly researched, and methodologically sound, this wide-ranging look at how choices about sex triumphed over established class systems and artificial racial boundaries supplies a refreshing contribution to the history of early Louisiana.
Race, Sex, and Social Order in Early New Orleans
Author: Jennifer M. Spear
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801898781
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351
Book Description
Winner, 2009 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History, The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Historical Association A microcosm of exaggerated societal extremes—poverty and wealth, vice and virtue, elitism and equality—New Orleans is a tangled web of race, cultural mores, and sexual identities. Jennifer M. Spear's examination of the dialectical relationship between politics and social practice unravels the city’s construction of race during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Spear brings together archival evidence from three different languages and the most recent and respected scholarship on racial formation and interracial sex to explain why free people of color became a significant population in the early days of New Orleans and to show how authorities attempted to use concepts of race and social hierarchy to impose order on a decidedly disorderly society. She recounts and analyzes the major conflicts that influenced New Orleanian culture: legal attempts to impose racial barriers and social order, political battles over propriety and freedom, and cultural clashes over place and progress. At each turn, Spear’s narrative challenges the prevailing academic assumptions and supports her efforts to move exploration of racial formation away from cultural and political discourses and toward social histories. Strikingly argued, richly researched, and methodologically sound, this wide-ranging look at how choices about sex triumphed over established class systems and artificial racial boundaries supplies a refreshing contribution to the history of early Louisiana.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801898781
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351
Book Description
Winner, 2009 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History, The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Historical Association A microcosm of exaggerated societal extremes—poverty and wealth, vice and virtue, elitism and equality—New Orleans is a tangled web of race, cultural mores, and sexual identities. Jennifer M. Spear's examination of the dialectical relationship between politics and social practice unravels the city’s construction of race during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Spear brings together archival evidence from three different languages and the most recent and respected scholarship on racial formation and interracial sex to explain why free people of color became a significant population in the early days of New Orleans and to show how authorities attempted to use concepts of race and social hierarchy to impose order on a decidedly disorderly society. She recounts and analyzes the major conflicts that influenced New Orleanian culture: legal attempts to impose racial barriers and social order, political battles over propriety and freedom, and cultural clashes over place and progress. At each turn, Spear’s narrative challenges the prevailing academic assumptions and supports her efforts to move exploration of racial formation away from cultural and political discourses and toward social histories. Strikingly argued, richly researched, and methodologically sound, this wide-ranging look at how choices about sex triumphed over established class systems and artificial racial boundaries supplies a refreshing contribution to the history of early Louisiana.
Spectacular Wickedness
Author: Emily Epstein Landau
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807150142
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
From 1897 to 1917 the red-light district of Storyville commercialized and even thrived on New Orleans's longstanding reputation for sin and sexual excess. This notorious neighborhood, located just outside of the French Quarter, hosted a diverse cast of characters who reflected the cultural milieu and complex social structure of turn-of-the-century New Orleans, a city infamous for both prostitution and interracial intimacy. In particular, Lulu White—a mixed-race prostitute and madam—created an image of herself and marketed it profitably to sell sex with light-skinned women to white men of means. In Spectacular Wickedness, Emily Epstein Landau examines the social history of this famed district within the cultural context of developing racial, sexual, and gender ideologies and practices. Storyville's founding was envisioned as a reform measure, an effort by the city's business elite to curb and contain prostitution—namely, to segregate it. In 1890, the Louisiana legislature passed the Separate Car Act, which, when challenged by New Orleans's Creoles of color, led to the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, constitutionally sanctioning the enactment of "separate but equal" laws. The concurrent partitioning of both prostitutes and blacks worked only to reinforce Storyville's libidinous license and turned sex across the color line into a more lucrative commodity. By looking at prostitution through the lens of patriarchy and demonstrating how gendered racial ideologies proved crucial to the remaking of southern society in the aftermath of the Civil War, Landau reveals how Storyville's salacious and eccentric subculture played a significant role in the way New Orleans constructed itself during the New South era.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807150142
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
From 1897 to 1917 the red-light district of Storyville commercialized and even thrived on New Orleans's longstanding reputation for sin and sexual excess. This notorious neighborhood, located just outside of the French Quarter, hosted a diverse cast of characters who reflected the cultural milieu and complex social structure of turn-of-the-century New Orleans, a city infamous for both prostitution and interracial intimacy. In particular, Lulu White—a mixed-race prostitute and madam—created an image of herself and marketed it profitably to sell sex with light-skinned women to white men of means. In Spectacular Wickedness, Emily Epstein Landau examines the social history of this famed district within the cultural context of developing racial, sexual, and gender ideologies and practices. Storyville's founding was envisioned as a reform measure, an effort by the city's business elite to curb and contain prostitution—namely, to segregate it. In 1890, the Louisiana legislature passed the Separate Car Act, which, when challenged by New Orleans's Creoles of color, led to the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, constitutionally sanctioning the enactment of "separate but equal" laws. The concurrent partitioning of both prostitutes and blacks worked only to reinforce Storyville's libidinous license and turned sex across the color line into a more lucrative commodity. By looking at prostitution through the lens of patriarchy and demonstrating how gendered racial ideologies proved crucial to the remaking of southern society in the aftermath of the Civil War, Landau reveals how Storyville's salacious and eccentric subculture played a significant role in the way New Orleans constructed itself during the New South era.
Race and Nation in the Age of Emancipations
Author: Whitney Nell Stewart
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820353108
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
With these essays, historians contend that emancipation was not something that simply happened to enslaved peoples but rather something in which they actively participated. Their examination uncovers the various techniques employed by people of African descent across the Atlantic World, allowing a broader picture of their paths to freedom.
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820353108
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
With these essays, historians contend that emancipation was not something that simply happened to enslaved peoples but rather something in which they actively participated. Their examination uncovers the various techniques employed by people of African descent across the Atlantic World, allowing a broader picture of their paths to freedom.
New Orleans after the Civil War
Author: Justin A. Nystrom
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801899974
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Book Description
We often think of Reconstruction as an unfinished revolution. Justin A. Nystrom’s original study of the aftermath of emancipation in New Orleans takes a different perspective, arguing that the politics of the era were less of a binary struggle over political supremacy and morality than they were about a quest for stability in a world rendered uncertain and unfamiliar by the collapse of slavery. Commercially vibrant and racially unique before the Civil War, New Orleans after secession and following Appomattox provides an especially interesting case study in political and social adjustment. Taking a generational view and using longitudinal studies of some of the major political players of the era, New Orleans after the Civil War asks fundamentally new questions about life in the post–Civil War South: Who would emerge as leaders in the prostrate but economically ambitious city? How would whites who differed over secession come together over postwar policy? Where would the mixed-race middle class and newly freed slaves fit in the new order? Nystrom follows not only the period’s broad contours and occasional bloody conflicts but also the coalition building and the often surprising liaisons that formed to address these and related issues. His unusual approach breaks free from the worn stereotypes of Reconstruction to explore the uncertainty, self-doubt, and moral complexity that haunted Southerners after the war. This probing look at a generation of New Orleanians and how they redefined a society shattered by the Civil War engages historical actors on their own terms and makes real the human dimension of life during this difficult period in American history.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801899974
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Book Description
We often think of Reconstruction as an unfinished revolution. Justin A. Nystrom’s original study of the aftermath of emancipation in New Orleans takes a different perspective, arguing that the politics of the era were less of a binary struggle over political supremacy and morality than they were about a quest for stability in a world rendered uncertain and unfamiliar by the collapse of slavery. Commercially vibrant and racially unique before the Civil War, New Orleans after secession and following Appomattox provides an especially interesting case study in political and social adjustment. Taking a generational view and using longitudinal studies of some of the major political players of the era, New Orleans after the Civil War asks fundamentally new questions about life in the post–Civil War South: Who would emerge as leaders in the prostrate but economically ambitious city? How would whites who differed over secession come together over postwar policy? Where would the mixed-race middle class and newly freed slaves fit in the new order? Nystrom follows not only the period’s broad contours and occasional bloody conflicts but also the coalition building and the often surprising liaisons that formed to address these and related issues. His unusual approach breaks free from the worn stereotypes of Reconstruction to explore the uncertainty, self-doubt, and moral complexity that haunted Southerners after the war. This probing look at a generation of New Orleanians and how they redefined a society shattered by the Civil War engages historical actors on their own terms and makes real the human dimension of life during this difficult period in American history.
The Accidental City
Author: Lawrence N. Powell
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674065441
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449
Book Description
Chronicles the history of the city from its being contended over as swampland through Louisiana's statehood in 1812, discussing its motley identities as a French village, African market town, Spanish fortress, and trade center.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674065441
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449
Book Description
Chronicles the history of the city from its being contended over as swampland through Louisiana's statehood in 1812, discussing its motley identities as a French village, African market town, Spanish fortress, and trade center.
Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World
Author: Merry Wiesner-Hanks
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317723252
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 553
Book Description
The book surveys the ways in which Christian ideas and institutions shaped sexual norms and conduct from the time of Luther and Columbus to that of Thomas Jefferson. It is global in scope and geographic in organization, with chapters on Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, and North America. All the key topics are covered, including marriage and divorce, fornication and illegitimacy, clerical sexuality, same-sex relations, witchcraft and love magic, moral crimes, and inter-racial relationships. Each chapter in this second edition has been fully updated to reflect new scholarship, with expanded coverage of many of the key issues, particularly in areas outside of Europe. Other updates include extra analysis of the religious ideas and activities of ordinary people in Europe, and new material on the colonial world. The book sets its findings within the context of many historical fields- the history of sexuality and the body, women's history, legal and religious history, queer theory, and colonial studies- and provides readers with an introduction to key theoretical and methodological issues in each of these areas. Each chapter includes an extensive section on further reading, surveying and commenting on the newest English-language secondary literature.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317723252
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 553
Book Description
The book surveys the ways in which Christian ideas and institutions shaped sexual norms and conduct from the time of Luther and Columbus to that of Thomas Jefferson. It is global in scope and geographic in organization, with chapters on Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, and North America. All the key topics are covered, including marriage and divorce, fornication and illegitimacy, clerical sexuality, same-sex relations, witchcraft and love magic, moral crimes, and inter-racial relationships. Each chapter in this second edition has been fully updated to reflect new scholarship, with expanded coverage of many of the key issues, particularly in areas outside of Europe. Other updates include extra analysis of the religious ideas and activities of ordinary people in Europe, and new material on the colonial world. The book sets its findings within the context of many historical fields- the history of sexuality and the body, women's history, legal and religious history, queer theory, and colonial studies- and provides readers with an introduction to key theoretical and methodological issues in each of these areas. Each chapter includes an extensive section on further reading, surveying and commenting on the newest English-language secondary literature.
Experiencing Empire
Author: Patrick Griffin
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813939895
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377
Book Description
Born of clashing visions of empire in England and the colonies, the American Revolution saw men and women grappling with power— and its absence—in dynamic ways. On both sides of the revolutionary divide, Americans viewed themselves as an imperial people. This perspective conditioned how they understood the exercise of power, how they believed governments had to function, and how they situated themselves in a world dominated by other imperial players. Eighteenth-century Americans experienced what can be called an "imperial-revolutionary moment." Over the course of the eighteenth century, the colonies were integrated into a broader Atlantic world, a process that forced common men and women to reexamine the meanings and influences of empire in their own lives. The tensions inherent in this process led to revolution. After the Revolution, the idea of empire provided order—albeit at a cost to many—during a chaotic period. Viewing the early republic from an imperial-revolutionary perspective, the essays in this collection consider subjects as far-ranging as merchants, winemaking, slavery, sex, and chronology to nostalgia, fort construction, and urban unrest. They move from the very center of the empire in London to the far western frontier near St. Louis, offering a new way to consider America’s most formative period.
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813939895
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377
Book Description
Born of clashing visions of empire in England and the colonies, the American Revolution saw men and women grappling with power— and its absence—in dynamic ways. On both sides of the revolutionary divide, Americans viewed themselves as an imperial people. This perspective conditioned how they understood the exercise of power, how they believed governments had to function, and how they situated themselves in a world dominated by other imperial players. Eighteenth-century Americans experienced what can be called an "imperial-revolutionary moment." Over the course of the eighteenth century, the colonies were integrated into a broader Atlantic world, a process that forced common men and women to reexamine the meanings and influences of empire in their own lives. The tensions inherent in this process led to revolution. After the Revolution, the idea of empire provided order—albeit at a cost to many—during a chaotic period. Viewing the early republic from an imperial-revolutionary perspective, the essays in this collection consider subjects as far-ranging as merchants, winemaking, slavery, sex, and chronology to nostalgia, fort construction, and urban unrest. They move from the very center of the empire in London to the far western frontier near St. Louis, offering a new way to consider America’s most formative period.
Louisiana and the Gulf South Frontier, 1500–1821
Author: F. Todd Smith
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807157120
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
Bound together by social, demographic, and economic commonalities, the territory extending from East Texas to West Florida occupies a unique space in early American history. A masterful synthesis of two decades of scholarly work, F. Todd Smith's Louisiana and the Gulf South Frontier, 1500-1821 examines the region's history from the eve of European colonization to the final imposition of American hegemony. The agricultural richness of the Gulf Coast gave rise to an extraordinarily diverse society: development of food crops rendered local indigenous groups wealthier and more powerful than their counterparts in New England and the West, and white demand for plantation slave labor produced a disproportionately large black population compared to other parts of the country. European settlers were a heterogeneous mix as well, creating a multinational blend of cultures and religions that did not exist on the largely Anglo-Protestant Atlantic Coast. Because of this diversity, which allowed no single group to gain primacy over the rest, Smith's study characterizes the Gulf South as a frontier from the sixteenth century to the early years of the nineteenth. Only in the twenty years following the Louisiana Purchase did Americans manage to remove most of the Indian tribes, overwhelm Louisiana's French Creoles numerically and politically, and impose a racial system in accordance with the rest of the Deep South. Moving fluently across the boundaries of colonial possessions and state lines, Louisiana and the Gulf South Frontier, 1500-1821 is a comprehensive and highly readable overview of the Gulf Coast's distinctive and enthralling history.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807157120
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
Bound together by social, demographic, and economic commonalities, the territory extending from East Texas to West Florida occupies a unique space in early American history. A masterful synthesis of two decades of scholarly work, F. Todd Smith's Louisiana and the Gulf South Frontier, 1500-1821 examines the region's history from the eve of European colonization to the final imposition of American hegemony. The agricultural richness of the Gulf Coast gave rise to an extraordinarily diverse society: development of food crops rendered local indigenous groups wealthier and more powerful than their counterparts in New England and the West, and white demand for plantation slave labor produced a disproportionately large black population compared to other parts of the country. European settlers were a heterogeneous mix as well, creating a multinational blend of cultures and religions that did not exist on the largely Anglo-Protestant Atlantic Coast. Because of this diversity, which allowed no single group to gain primacy over the rest, Smith's study characterizes the Gulf South as a frontier from the sixteenth century to the early years of the nineteenth. Only in the twenty years following the Louisiana Purchase did Americans manage to remove most of the Indian tribes, overwhelm Louisiana's French Creoles numerically and politically, and impose a racial system in accordance with the rest of the Deep South. Moving fluently across the boundaries of colonial possessions and state lines, Louisiana and the Gulf South Frontier, 1500-1821 is a comprehensive and highly readable overview of the Gulf Coast's distinctive and enthralling history.
Sculpture at the Ends of Slavery
Author: Caitlin Meehye Beach
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520343263
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
Introduction : "Within a few steps of the spot" : art in an age of racial capitalism -- Grasping images : antislavery and the sculptural -- "The mute language of the marble" : slavery and Hiram Powers' Greek slave -- Sentiment, manufactured : John Bell and the abolitionist image under empire -- Relief work : Edmonia Lewis and the poetics of plaster -- Between liberty and emancipation : Francesco Pezzicar's The Abolition of slavery -- Coda : "Sculptured dream of liberty".
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520343263
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
Introduction : "Within a few steps of the spot" : art in an age of racial capitalism -- Grasping images : antislavery and the sculptural -- "The mute language of the marble" : slavery and Hiram Powers' Greek slave -- Sentiment, manufactured : John Bell and the abolitionist image under empire -- Relief work : Edmonia Lewis and the poetics of plaster -- Between liberty and emancipation : Francesco Pezzicar's The Abolition of slavery -- Coda : "Sculptured dream of liberty".
Dispossessed Lives
Author: Marisa J. Fuentes
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812248228
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
Vividly recounting the lives of enslaved women in eighteenth-century Bridgetown, Barbados, and their conditions of confinement through urban, legal, sexual, and representational power wielded by slave owners, authorities, and the archive, Marisa J. Fuentes challenges how histories of vulnerable and invisible subjects are written.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812248228
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
Vividly recounting the lives of enslaved women in eighteenth-century Bridgetown, Barbados, and their conditions of confinement through urban, legal, sexual, and representational power wielded by slave owners, authorities, and the archive, Marisa J. Fuentes challenges how histories of vulnerable and invisible subjects are written.