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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Adorned Identities: An Archaeological Perspective On Race And Self-Presentation In 18th-Century Virginia, Johanna Hope Smith Aug 2017

Adorned Identities: An Archaeological Perspective On Race And Self-Presentation In 18th-Century Virginia, Johanna Hope Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

Institutionalized slavery helped to create the concept of race in the American mind and forced people into new social categories based on superficial bodily characteristics. These new social categories resulted in the formation of identities that were continuously negotiated, reinforced or challenged through daily bodily practices of self-presentation that included ways of dress, adornment, and physical action. Because slavery was defined on the body, an embodiment approach to plantation archaeology can shed new light on the construction of racial identities. This historical archaeology project combines an archaeological analysis of personal adornment artifacts with a close reading of travel sketches, mass-produced …


A Critical Historical Geography Of Slavery In The American South, Matthew Russell Cook May 2016

A Critical Historical Geography Of Slavery In The American South, Matthew Russell Cook

Doctoral Dissertations

In the more than 150 years since the end of the Civil War, Emancipation Proclamation, and 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution that formally brought an end to chattel slavery, people in the United States have done much to downplay, sanitize, and outright forget both the history of slavery—despite its foundational role in the establishment of the U.S. political economy—and the life-altering damage that powerful white men, predominantly, inflicted upon millions of Africans and African Americans through a brutal system that lasted more than 200 years. Contributing to the process of whitewashing the histories and geographies of …


The Political Ecology Of Early Childhood Lead Exposure At The New York African Burial Ground, Joseph Jones Mar 2015

The Political Ecology Of Early Childhood Lead Exposure At The New York African Burial Ground, Joseph Jones

Doctoral Dissertations

Nearly 25 years ago federal officials unearthed over 400 skeletal remains in Lower Manhattan. The site of the excavation was the New York African Burial Ground (NYABG), a 17th- and 18th-century cemetery for the city’s mostly enslaved African population. Today, the burial ground serves as a reminder of New York’s 200-year experiment with slavery. It is the first National Monument to honor enslaved African New Yorkers. This recognition is a testament to the resolve of African American descendants and their allies who, through political activism, would see these ancestors afforded in death some of the respect denied them in life. …