Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Homicide And History, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Violence seems more threatening today than in the relatively recent past. For centuries, crime was kept out of sight. The "criminal classes" were segregated from the rest of society. Newspapers, police, and courts paid relatively little attention to crimes among the poor. Today, things are different: television news thrives on scenes of flashing lights, distraught parents, and bloody sidewalks. Police continually patrol parts of town they used to ignore. Modern transportation permits members of the "dangerous classes" to range more widely than before. As a result, the general population is far more aware of violence now than in the past.

Legacy Of Violence, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Sociologists continue to be vexed by the pathology of urban violence: Why is it so random, so fierce, so easily triggered? One answer may be found in our Southern past.

The World The Liberal Capitalists Made (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South by James Oakes. New York: Knopf, 1990.

Slavery and Freedom pursues its thesis with dogged energy. "Southerners took their definition of freedom from the liberal capitalist world which produced them and of which they remained a part," Oakes argues, "and this could only mean that southern slavery was defined as the denial of the assumptions of liberal capitalism."

Intimate Colonialism: The Imperial Production Of Reproduction In Uganda, 1907-1925, Carol Summers

History Faculty Publications

British concern over the reproduction of the population and society of Uganda intensified from 1907 through 1924. Institutions and ideologies were developed to cope with an epidemic of STDs, to promote the family as a unit of reproduction, and to reform motherhood. The British colonizers and the African elite of Uganda built a population crisis from a collection of beliefs and data. The perceived severity of this crisis - and the response it evoked - changed over the years. That response began as a straightforward medical attempt to treat the ill. After the World War, though, "social hygiene" became an …

Twice Condemned: Slaves And The Criminal Laws Of Virginia, 1705-1865 (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Twice Condemned: Slaves and the Criminal Laws of Virginia, 1705-1865, by Philip J. Schwarz. Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1988.

Commentary: Honor And Martialism In The U.S. South And Prussian East Elbia During The Mid-Nineteenth Century, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

A commentary of Shearer Davis Bowman's essay on Honor and Martialism in the U.S. and Prussian East Elbia during the Mid-Nineteenth Century.

Without a second and unarmed, I have no inclination to offer a fundamental challenge to Professor Bowman's argument or his character. In fact, he has served us well by focusing on honor, martialism, and dueling as indices of comparison between the antebellum planters and the pre-1848 Junkers. I would like to build on the wealth of detail he has provided to help clarify the larger comparison between the South and Prussia.

The Heart Of American History (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book, The Heart of American History by James McPherson. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989.

The era of the Civil War and Reconstruction remains the crucible of American history, the trial that decisively defined this country and its self-perceived mission. The American people seem to recognize that fact, for no era in our history attracts the general reading public as does that between 1861 and 1877.

Prisons, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

American penitentiaries developed in two distinct phases, and southern states participated in both. Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, and Georgia built prisons before 1820, and between 1829 and 1842 new or newly reorganized institutions were established in Maryland, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, and Alabama. Only the Carolinas and Florida resisted the penitentiary before the Civil War.

Honor, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Southerners of the antebellum era made it clear that they subscribed to an ethic of honor, but they never specified exactly what honor meant. In large part, this was because the meaning of honor depended on its immediate context, on who claimed and who acknowledged it.

Everyman As Master (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Ayers, Edward L. Review of Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter, by Theodore Rosengarten. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,1987.

Many Excellent People: Power And Privilege In North Carolina 1850-1900 (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Many Excellent People: Power and Privilege in North Carolina 1850-1900 by Paul D. Escott. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

The Birth Of Jim Crow (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation by Joel Williamson. New York: Oxford University Press,1984.

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The Southern Enigma: Essays On Race, Class, And Folk Culture (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book, The Southern Enigma: Essays on Race, Class, and Folk Culture, edited by Walter J. Fraser, Jr., and Winfred B. Moore, Jr., Westport,Ct: Greenwood Press, 1983.

Baptized In Blood: The Religion Of The Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 by Charles Reagan Wilson. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980.

Northern Business And The Shape Of Southern Progress: The Case Of Tennessee's "Model City", Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

State governments, understandably eager to entice needed capital to their region, no longer entertained the earlier progressive ideal of an autonomous South. The perennially-tempting vision of rapid economic growth funded by plentiful Northern capital arose in new, distinctly modern, attire.