Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities (Cultural Studies of the United States)

Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities (Cultural Studies of the United States) Review

In the 1920s, black janitor Sylvester Long reinvented himself as Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, and Elizabeth Stern, the native-born daughter of a German Lutheran and a Welsh Baptist, authored the immigrant's narrative I Am a Woman—and a Jew; in the 1990s, Asa Carter, George Wallace's former speechwriter, produced the fake Cherokee autobiography, The Education of Little Tree. While striking, these examples of what Laura Browder calls ethnic impersonator autobiographies are by no means singular. Over the past 150 years, a number of American authors have left behind unwanted identities by writing themselves into new ethnicities.

Significantly, notes Browder, these ersatz autobiographies have tended to appear at flashpoints in American history: in the decades before the Civil War, when immigration laws and laws regarding Native Americans were changing in the 1920s, and during the civil rights era, for example. Examining the creation and reception of such works from the 1830s through the 1990s—against a background ranging from the abolition movement and Wild West shows to more recent controversies surrounding blackface performance and jazz music—Browder uncovers their surprising influence in shaping American notions of identity.

Lecciones biblicas creativas: del Antiguo Testamento: 12 Character Studies of Surprisingly Modern Men and Women (Especialidades Juveniles / Lecciones biblicas creativas) (Spanish Edition)

Lecciones biblicas creativas: del Antiguo Testamento: 12 Character Studies of Surprisingly Modern Men and Women (Especialidades Juveniles / Lecciones biblicas creativas) (Spanish Edition) Review

12 character studies of surprisingly modern men and women from the Old Testament reveal surprisingly modern emotions, decisions, and dilemmas in the lives of individuals like David and Rahab, Daniel and Ruth---all of whom ultimately love Jehovah in a way today's teens can understand. For youth workers, Sunday school teachers, and CE directors, Creative Bible Lessons from the Old Testament will help your students understand that the God who offered hope and courage to ancient history-makers still does the same for teenagers today.

Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (Studies in the Legal History of the South)

Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (Studies in the Legal History of the South) Review

This groundbreaking study of the law and culture of slavery in the antebellum Deep South takes readers into local courtrooms where people settled their civil disputes over property. Buyers sued sellers for breach of warranty when they considered slaves to be physically or morally defective; owners sued supervisors who whipped or neglected slaves under their care.

How, asks Ariela J. Gross, did communities reconcile the dilemmas such trials raised concerning the character of slaves and masters? Although slaves could not testify in court, their character was unavoidably at issue--and so their moral agency intruded into the courtroom. In addition, says Gross, "wherever the argument that black character depended on management by a white man appeared, that white man's good character depended on the demonstration that bad black character had other sources."

This led, for example, to physicians testifying that pathologies, not any shortcomings of their master, drove slaves to became runaways. Gross teases out other threads of complexity woven into these trials: the ways that legal disputes were also affairs of honor between white men; how witnesses and litigants based their views of slaves' character on narratives available in the culture at large; and how law reflected and shaped racial ideology. Combining methods of cultural anthropology, quantitative social history, and critical race theory, Double Character brings to life the law as a dramatic ritual in people's daily lives, and advances critical historical debates about law, honor, and commerce in the American South.