Description
Book SynopsisA comparative perspective on the way ideas of gender relations and identities shaped the struggle over resources, cultural practices, and political rights that followed the end of slavery in the Atlantic world
Trade Review“This anthology links Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States in its analysis of the role of gender in creating new social orders after the end of slavery. Taken together, the essays are clear, compelling, complex, and ultimately unsettling in their evocation of a past filled with hope for great change and largely effective struggles for its containment.”—Eileen Findlay, author of
Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870–1920“This innovative volume highlights the quite different ways in which men and women achieved freedom and faced the possibility of citizenship in postemancipation societies. By examining ideologies of gender as well as differences in experiences, the contributing authors broaden our understanding of emancipation as a transformative process. By placing women of color at the center of the analysis, moreover, many of these authors develop a new picture of the dynamics of emancipation.”—Rebecca Scott, author of
Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery“[A] must-read for scholars of the Atlantic world, gender history, colonial studies, and comparative slavery and emancipation. The clearly written introduction and tightly edited chapters are suitable for both undergraduate and graduate students, while the bibilographic essay is a good starting point to the historiography of some of the major debates.” -- Kerry Ward * International Journal of African Historical Studies *
“[A] thought-provoking collection of essays . . . valuable for its discussions of divergent gender ideals among men and women slaves, elites and non-elites, planters, abolitionists, and missionaries. It is most important for its descriptions of the efforts of former slaves to contest and define what it meant to be free and male, versus free and female, in the aftermath of emancipation.” -- Kathleen Higgins * American Historical Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Maps vii
Introduction: Gender and Slave Emancipation in Comparative Perspective / Diana Paton and Pamela Scully 1
Part I. Men, Women, Citizens 35
Masculinity, Citizenship, and the Production of Knowledge in the Postemancipation Cape Colony, 1834–1844 / Pamela Scully 37
Négresse, Mulâtresse, Citoyenne: Gender and Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1650–1848 / Sue Peabody 56
Acting as Free Men: Subaltern Masculinities and Citizenship in Postslavery Jamaica / Mimi Sheller 79
Women and Notions of Womanhood in Brazilian Abolitionism / Roger A. Kittleson 99
A Nation’s Sin: White Women and U.S. Policy toward Freedpeople / Carol Faulkner 121
Part II. Families, Land, and Labor 141
Family Strategies, Gender, and the Shift to Wage Labor in the British Caribbean / Bridget Brereton 143
Gender and Emancipation in French West Africa / Martin Klein and Richard Roberts 162
Two Stories of Gender and Slave Emancipation in Cienfuegos and Santa Clara, Central Cuba: A Microhistorical Approach to the Atlantic World / Michael Zeuske 181
Libertos and
Libertas in the Construction of the Free Worker in Postemancipation Puerto Rico / Ileana Rodriguez-Silva 199
Part III. The Public Sphere in the Age of Emancipation 223
Philanthropy, Gender, and the Production of Public Life in Barbados, ca. 1790–ca. 1850 / Melanie Newton 225
Young Ladies and Dissolute Women: Conflicting Views of Culture and Gender in Public Entertainment, Kingstown, St. Vincent, 1838–1888 / Sheena Boa 247
Mulatas, Crioulos, and Morenas: Racial Hierarchy, Gender Relations, and National Identity in Postabolition Popular Song: Southeastern Brazil, 1890—1920 / Martha Abreu (translated from the Portuguese by Amy Chazkel and Junia Claudia Zaidan) 267
The Rhetoric of Miscegenation and the Reconstruction of Race: Debating Marriage, Sex, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Arkansas / Hannah Rosen 289
Gender and the Politics of the Household in Reconstruction Louisiana, 1865–1878 / Marek Steedman 310
Bibliographic Essay / Diana Paton 328
Contributors 357
Index 361
