Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America (Early American Studies) - Tapa dura

Block, Sharon

 
9780812250060: Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America (Early American Studies)
Tapa dura
ISBN 10: 0812250060 ISBN 13: 9780812250060
Editorial: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018

Sinopsis

In <i>Colonial Complexions</i>, historian Sharon Block examines how Anglo-Americans built racial ideologies out of descriptions of physical appearance. By analyzing more than 4,000 advertisements for fugitive servants and slaves in colonial newspapers alongside scores of transatlantic sources, she reveals how colonists transformed observable characteristics into racist reality. Building on her expertise in digital humanities, Block repurposes these well-known historical sources to newly highlight how daily language called race and identity into being before the rise of scientific racism.

In the eighteenth century, a multitude of characteristics beyond skin color factored into racial assumptions, and complexion did not have a stable or singular meaning. Colonists justified a race-based slave labor system not by opposing black and white but by accumulating differences in the bodies they described: racism was made real by marking variation from a norm on some bodies, and variation as the norm on others. Such subtle systemizations of racism naturalized enslavement into bodily description, erased Native American heritage, and privileged life history as a crucial marker of free status only for people of European-based identities.

<i>Colonial Complexions</i> suggests alternative possibilities to modern formulations of racial identities and offers a precise historical analysis of the beliefs behind evolving notions of race-based differences in North American history.

"Sinopsis" puede pertenecer a otra edición de este libro.

Acerca del autor

Sharon Block is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine.

"Sobre este título" puede pertenecer a otra edición de este libro.

Editorial
University of Pennsylvania Press
Año de publicación
2018
Idioma
Inglés
ISBN 10 
0812250060
ISBN 13 
9780812250060
Encuadernación
Tapa dura
Número de páginas
232
Contacto del fabricante
no disponible
Persona responsable
Mare Nostrum Group B.V.
gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk

Doelen 72
Breda
4831 GR
Holanda