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Colonial Complexions : Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America / Sharon Block.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Early American StudiesPublisher: Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©2018Description: 1 online resource (232 p.) : 17 illusContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780812294934
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 305.800973
LOC classification:
  • E184.A1
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Complicating Humors and Rethinking Complexion -- Chapter 2. Shaping Bodies in Print: Labor and Health -- Chapter 3. Coloring Bodies: Naturalized Incompatibilities -- Chapter 4. Categorizing Bodies: Race, Place, and the Pursuit of Freedom -- Chapter 5. Written by and on the Body: Racialization of Affects and Effects -- Epilogue -- Appendix 1. Advertisements for Runaways: Sources and Methodology -- Appendix 2. Graphic Overview of Advertisements for Runaways -- Appendix 3. Newspapers with Advertisements for Runaways (1750–75) -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments
Summary: In Colonial Complexions, 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.Colonial Complexions 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.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780812294934

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Complicating Humors and Rethinking Complexion -- Chapter 2. Shaping Bodies in Print: Labor and Health -- Chapter 3. Coloring Bodies: Naturalized Incompatibilities -- Chapter 4. Categorizing Bodies: Race, Place, and the Pursuit of Freedom -- Chapter 5. Written by and on the Body: Racialization of Affects and Effects -- Epilogue -- Appendix 1. Advertisements for Runaways: Sources and Methodology -- Appendix 2. Graphic Overview of Advertisements for Runaways -- Appendix 3. Newspapers with Advertisements for Runaways (1750–75) -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments

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http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

In Colonial Complexions, 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.Colonial Complexions 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.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 04. Okt 2022)