Early American Women's Narratives of Race, Society, and the Law
Sharon M. Harris
“Executing Race provides a model for interrogating the language and structure of texts that are traditionally considered to be extra-literary. Harris’s conclusions concerning the construction and manipulation of our understandings of race and genre in the eighteenth century, and the implications of such for law and literature are both original and vitally important.” —Dorothy Z. Baker, University of Houston
“Executing Race offers a useful blend of historical material and theoretical perspective, based on solid current scholarly discussions and careful research. The chapters on Lucy Terry, Ann Eliza Bleecker, and Belinda alone will be worth the price of the book.” —Pattie Cowell, Colorado State University
Executing Race examines the multiple ways in which race, class, and the law impacted women’s lives in the 18th century and, equally important, the ways in which women sought to change legal and cultural attitudes in this volatile period.
Through an examination of infanticide cases, Harris reveals how conceptualizations of women, especially their bodies and their legal rights, evolved over the course of the 18th century. Early in the century, infanticide cases incorporated the rhetoric of the witch trials. However, at mid-century, a few women, especially African American women, began to challenge definitions of “bastardy” (a legal requirement for infanticide), and by the end of the century, women were rarely executed for this crime as the new nation reconsidered illegitimacy in relation to its own struggle to establish political legitimacy. Against this background of legal domination of women’s lives, Harris exposes the ways in which women writers and activists negotiated legal territory to invoke their voices into the radically changing legal discourse.
Harris’s recovery of little-known writings by well-known writers, along with the recovery of radical women authors of the Revolutionary period, offers new insights into women’s writings, race relations, and the construction of nationalism in the eighteenth century.
Sharon M. Harris is Lorraine Sherley Professor in Literature in the Department of English, Texas Christian University.
Jan 2005
Social Science/Ethnic, History/United States, Literary Criticism/American
288 pp. 6x9
$23.95 paper 0-8142-5131-5
$69.95 cloth 0-8142-0975-0
$9.95 0-8142-9052-3
Warren
Van Tine and Michael Pierce, eds.
Van Tine and Pierce’s
Builders of Ohio is composed of twenty-four essays that use biography to explore
Ohio’s history. Collectively, they provide a historical overview of the
state’s development from George Croghan’s search for fame and fortune
on the seventeenth-century frontier through Dave Thomas’s more recent creation
of a fast-food empire.
Each chapter also addresses important events and transformations in the state’s
history such as: European settlement; Native American resistance; the creation
of territorial and state governments; the development of the state’s educational
and economic institutions; the disruption created by the Civil War; the struggle
of African Americans and women to participate in Ohio’s public life; efforts
to ameliorate the pernicious effects of industrialization; the negotiation of
the state’s role in a nation increasingly dominated by the federal government;
or the ramifications of de-industrialization and rise of a service economy.
Warren Van Tine is professor
of history at The Ohio State University. Michael Pierce is associate director
of the Arkansas Center for Oral and Visual History, assistant editor of the
Arkansas Historical Quarterly, and instructor of history at the University of
Arkansas.
2003
Ohio, regional, history,
biography
336 pp. 6 x 9
24 illus.
$24.95 paper 0-8142-5121-8
$69.95s cloth 0-8142-0951-3
$9.95s CD 0-8142-9024-8