plaçage was a recognized extralegal system in which white French and Spanish and later Creole men entered into the equivalent of common-law marriages with women of African, Indian and white (European) Creole descent. The term comes from the French placer meaning “to place with”. The women were not legally recognized as wives, but were known as placées; their relationships were recognized among the free people of color as mariages de la main gauche or left-handed marriages. Many were often quarteronnes or quadroons, the offspring of a European and a mulatto, but plaçage did occur between whites and mulattoes and blacks. The system flourished throughout the French and Spanish colonial periods, and apparently reached its zenith during the latter, between 1769 and 1803. It was not limited to Louisiana, but also flourished in the cities of Natchez and Biloxi, Mississippi; Mobile, Alabama; St. Augustine and Pensacola, Florida; as well as Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti). Plaçage, however, drew most of its fame—and notoriety—from its open application in New Orleans. Despite the prevalence of interracial encounters in the colony, not all Creole women of color were or became placées… |
The Moment of Theory: Race as Myth and MediumPosted in Media Archive, Social Science, United States, Videos on 2013-01-02 16:52Z by Steven |
The Moment of Theory: Race as Myth and Medium
W. E. B. Du Bois Lecture Series
W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research
Harvard University
2010-04-20
W. J. T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History
University of Chicago
Watch the lecture here.
Cogewea, The Half Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle RangePosted in Books, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, Novels, United States on 2013-01-02 04:01Z by Steven |
Cogewea, The Half Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range
University of Nebraska Press
1981 (originally published in 1927)
302 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8032-8110-3
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-8032-3069-9
Mourning Dove (Humishuma) (1888-1936)
Introduction by Dexter Fisher (Cirillo)
One of the first known novels by a Native American woman, Cogewea (1927) is the story of a half-blood girl caught between the worlds of Anglo ranchers and full-blood reservation Indians; between the craven and false-hearted easterner Alfred Densmore and James LaGrinder, a half-blood cowboy and the best rider on the Flathead; between book learning and the folk wisdom of her full-blood grandmother. The book combines authentic Indian lore with the circumstance and dialogue of a popular romance; in its language, it shows a self-taught writer attempting to come to terms with the rift between formal written style and the comfort-able rhythms and slang of familiar speech.
Changing FamiliesPosted in Articles, Book/Video Reviews, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Religion on 2013-01-02 01:44Z by Steven |
Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Ideas
December 2007
Caryn Aviv, Senior Instructor in Secular Jewish Society & Civilization
University of Colorado, Boulder
A Different Sexual Revolution
The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism, by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Indiana University Press, 2007. 320 pages
The Family Flamboyant: Race Politics, Queer Families, Jewish Lives, by Marla Brettschneider, SUNY Press, 2006. 232 pages
Two new books provide food for thought about contemporary Jewish identities in the United States. The Family Flamboyant: Race Politics, Queer Families, Jewish Lives by Marla Brettschneider, and The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism, by Melanie Kaye Kantrowitz, have much in common. Both books are informed by the authors’ deep commitment to social justice, their insights as Ashkenazi Jewish lesbians, and their experiences as coalition organizers. And both authors offer a nuanced, passionate, and sophisticated analysis of slippery Jewish identities in relationship to racial politics and inequality in the United States.
Each author inserts compelling autobiographical experiences into their political analyses. Brettschneider reveals the unsavory and overt racism and homophobia of the adoption system in the United States based on her own experiences of trying to adopt as an outspoken Jewish lesbian. Kaye/Kantrowitz draws upon her experiences of living in diverse places in the U.S., her struggles for racial and economic justice, and her memories of growing up in a secular, Yiddish-inflected family in Brooklyn. And both books provide meticulously documented empirical and theoretical evidence for the arguments they advance, offering a veritable bibliographic trove of resources for scholars and lay readers interested in these literatures…
Read the entire review here.