By David L. Schoenbrun (NHC Fellow, 2009–10) Systems of belonging, including ethnicity, are not static, automatic, or free of contest. Historical contexts shape the ways which we are included in or excluded from specific classifications. Building on an amazing array of sources, David L. Schoenbrun examines groupwork—the imaginative labor that people do to constitute themselves … Continued
By David Simpson (NHC Fellow, 1984–85) Language, its nature, and its uses have always been controversial topics. This engaging study brings into focus those highly charged years in America Between 1776 and 1850 when questions of language mirrored the social and political arguments of the time and generated even more arguments on both sides of … Continued
Edited by Trevor Burnard (NHC Fellow, 2008–09) and Gad J. Heuman The Routledge History of Slavery is a landmark publication that provides an overview of the main themes surrounding the history of slavery from ancient Greece to the present day. Taking stock of the field of Slave Studies, the book explores the major advances that have … Continued
By Anna Clark (NHC Fellow, 1990–91) Linking the personal and the political, Anna Clark depicts the making of the working class in Britain as a "struggle for the breeches." The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed significant changes in notions of masculinity and femininity, the sexual division of labor, and sexual mores, changes that … Continued
By Madelyn Gutwirth (NHC Fellow, 1985–86) In this extraordinarily rich book, Madelyn Gutwirth examines over one hundred prints and paintings, dozens of texts, and the work of a great many cultural critics in order to consider how gender politics were played out during a highly volatile era. Finding evidence of a crisis in gender relations … Continued
By David B. Quinn (NHC Fellow, 1982–83)
By Mia Bay (NHC Fellow, 2009–10)
By Sandra E. Greene (NHC Fellow, 2007–08; 2014–15) Slavery in Africa existed for hundreds of years before it was abolished in the late 19th century. Yet, we know little about how enslaved individuals, especially those who never left Africa, talked about their experiences. Collecting never before published or translated narratives of Africans from southeastern Ghana, … Continued
By Ezra Greenspan (NHC Fellow, 2011–12) Born into slavery in Kentucky, raised on the Western frontier on the farm adjacent to Daniel Boone’s, “rented” out in adolescence to a succession of steamboat captains on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the young man known as “Sandy” reinvented himself as “William Wells” Brown after escaping to freedom. … Continued
By John C. G. Röhl (NHC Fellow, 1997–98) This rich and compelling volume describes the life of Kaiser Wilhelm II from his birth in 1859 to his accession to the Prusso-German throne in 1888, a story so extraordinary that it will fascinate anyone interested in the psychology and the throng of personalities of the period. … Continued