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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Networks Of Resistance : Black Virginians Remember Civil War Loyalties, Amanda Kleintop Apr 2011

Networks Of Resistance : Black Virginians Remember Civil War Loyalties, Amanda Kleintop

Honors Theses

On June 22, 1877, William Charity explained his neighborhood’s Civil War loyalties to special commissioner Isaac Baldwin of the Southern Claims Commission (SCC): “The colored people were mostly all for the union.” Charity, a free black Virginian, recognized that “mostly” did not mean all. He went on to suggest: “some of them were blind.” As a self-identified Unionist, Charity had difficulty envisioning a black man who was not loyal to the Union cause and emancipation during the Civil War. Current debates, however, have seized on those black Virginians Charity called “blind,” taking the “mostly” Unionist majority for granted. Like Charity, …


"Go In De Wilderness": Evading The "Eyes Of Others" In The Slave Songs, Erik Nielson Mar 2011

"Go In De Wilderness": Evading The "Eyes Of Others" In The Slave Songs, Erik Nielson

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

This essay explores the trope of the wilderness in the slave spirituals, arguing that it functions to recreate symbolically the natural landscape into which slaves regularly took refuge in order to elude white surveillance. Drawing on a variety of sources, it considers the unique surveillance culture in the antebellum South, its effect on the everyday lives of the slaves, and the ways in which the slaves used their natural surroundings to avoid it. It then uses a close analysis of the song "Go in the Wilderness " as a point of departure for a broader discussion of the way the …


Imagining Jefferson And Hemings In Paris, Suzanne W. Jones Jan 2011

Imagining Jefferson And Hemings In Paris, Suzanne W. Jones

English Faculty Publications

In Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, cultural critic Bell Hooks argues that "no one seems to know how to tell the story" of white men romantically involved with slave women because long ago another story supplanted it: "that story, invented by white men, is about the overwhelming desperate longing black men have to sexually violate the bodies of white women." Narratives of white exploitation and black solidarity have made it difficult to imagine consensual sex and impossible to imagine love of any kind across the color line in the plantation South. Hooks predicted that the suppressed story, if …


Book Review: The Mormon Menace: Violence And Anti-Mormonism In The Postbellum South, Terryl Givens Jan 2011

Book Review: The Mormon Menace: Violence And Anti-Mormonism In The Postbellum South, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

“Whereas anti-Mormon violence had been characteristic of virtually every northern locale of Mormon settlement during the antebellum period,” Patrick Mason writes in his history of the subject, “violent assaults on Mormon missionaries became an increasingly southern practice in the years after the Civil War” (93). What distinguishes Mason’s book from other chapters in the sad saga of religious persecution is his excellent analysis of the complexities that result when political agendas, regional norms and interests, and theories on the proper role and limits of government all collide in the face of religious heterodoxy. Virtually all late nineteenth-century citizens and politicians …


[Introduction To] America's War: Talking About The Civil War And Emancipation On Their 150th Anniversaries, Edward L. Ayers Jan 2011

[Introduction To] America's War: Talking About The Civil War And Emancipation On Their 150th Anniversaries, Edward L. Ayers

Bookshelf

Edited by Edward L. Ayers, America’s War is an anthology of Civil War writing originally published between 1852 and 2008. Co-published by the American Library Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities, America’s War was created in support of a national reading and discussion program for libraries called “Let’s Talk About It: Making Sense of the American Civil War.”

The selections in America’s War include works of historical fiction and interpretation, speeches, diaries, memoirs, biographies, and short stories. Together, these readings provide a glimpse of the vast sweep and profound breadth of Americans’ war among and against themselves, adding …


Jane Addams: Spirit In Action By Louise W. Knight, Mari Boor Tonn Jan 2011

Jane Addams: Spirit In Action By Louise W. Knight, Mari Boor Tonn

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The common temptation to perceive greatness as imprinted at birth, however, is skillfully disabused in Louise Knight’s meticulous, insightful,and often poignant biography, Jane Addams: Spirit in Action, which traces the complicated odyssey of a well-heeled idealist—initially conflicted by her material privilege, disappointed by gender-codes confining her ambitions, and haunted by familial ghosts and duties—into the pantheon of U.S. political idols. Of particular interest to rhetorical scholars, Knight weaves into Addams’s arresting tale her early baptism into public speaking, writings that shaped her expression in public forums, rhetorical strategies she employed, and platform failures as well as successes. A prolific speaker, …


Church Burnings, Eric S. Yellin Jan 2011

Church Burnings, Eric S. Yellin

History Faculty Publications

On 15 September 1963 a bomb exploded in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. The ensuing fire and death of four little girls placed the violence of white supremacy on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. It also entered the 16th Street Church into a long history of attacks against houses of worship in the American South. Though churches burn for any number of reasons, including accident and insurance fraud, church arson in southern culture has frequently been associated with a symbolic assault on a community’s core institution.


Peace Corps At 50: Bringing The World Back Home, Nicole Sackley Jan 2011

Peace Corps At 50: Bringing The World Back Home, Nicole Sackley

History Faculty Publications

Both the critics and defenders of the Peace Corps judge the organization on its ability to change other nations' views of the United States, either by offering technical assistance or by making friends for the United States in the world. What is missing from these debates is a frank acknowledgment that the Peace Corps teaches Americans as much as it serves the world. The organization's greatest value may be in "bringing the world back home" through its more than 200,000 former volunteers.


The United States On The Eve Of The Civil War, Edward L. Ayers Jan 2011

The United States On The Eve Of The Civil War, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

The four-year war that eventually descended on the nation seemed impossible only months before it began. Powerful conflicts pulled the United States apart in the decades before 1860, but shared interests, cultures, and identities tied the country together, sometimes in new ways. So confident were they in the future that Americans expected that the forces of cohesion would triumph over the forces of division.