Freedom and Slavery

Exhibiting Slavery: The Caribbean Postmodern Novel as Museum

Vivian Nun Halloran
University of Virginia Press, 2009

Exhibiting Slavery examines the ways in which Caribbean postmodern historical novels about slavery written in Spanish, English, and French function as virtual museums, simultaneously showcasing and curating a collection of "primary documents" within their pages. As Vivian Nun Halloran attests, these novels highlight narrative "objects" extraneous to their plot—such as excerpts from the work of earlier writers, allusions to specific works of art, the uniforms of maroon armies assembled in preparation of a military offensive, and accounts of slavery's negative impact on the traditional family unit in Africa or the United States. In doing so, they demand that their readers go beyond the pages of the books to sort out fact from fiction and consider what relationship these featured "objects" have to slavery and to contemporary life.

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The Long Afterlife of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration

Karen M. Inouye
Stanford University Press, 2016

Re-examining the history of imprisonment of U.S. and Canadian citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, The Long Afterlife of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration explores how historical events can linger in individual and collective memory and crystallize in powerful moments of political engagement. Drawing on interviews and untapped archival materials, Inouye considers the experiences of former wartime prisoners and their ongoing involvement in large-scale educational and legislative efforts. Inouye shows how imprisonment and the suspension of rights impact political discourse and public policies in the U.S. and Canada long after their supposed political and legal reversal. She attends to how activist groups can use the persistence of memory to engage empathetically with people across cultural and political divides and addresses the mechanisms by which injustice can transform both its victims and its perpetrators.

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The Work of Recognition: Caribbean Colombia and the Postemancipation Struggle for Citizenship

Jason McGraw
University of North Carolina Press, 2014

This book tells the compelling story of postemancipation Colombia, from the liberation of the slaves in the 1850s through the country's first general labor strikes in the 1910s. As Jason McGraw demonstrates, ending slavery fostered a new sense of citizenship, one shaped both by a model of universal rights and by the particular freedom struggles of African-descended people. Colombia's Caribbean coast was at the center of these transformations, in which women and men of color, the region's majority population, increasingly asserted the freedom to control their working conditions, fight in civil wars, and express their religious beliefs.

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Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers
University of North Carolina Press, 2011

For black women in antebellum Charleston, freedom was not a static legal category but a fragile and contingent experience. In this deeply researched social history, Amrita Chakrabarti Myers analyzes the ways in which black women in Charleston acquired, defined, and defended their own vision of freedom. Drawing on legislative and judicial materials, probate data, tax lists, church records, family papers, and more, Myers creates detailed portraits of individual women while exploring how black female Charlestonians sought to create a fuller freedom by improving their financial, social, and legal standing. Forging Freedom examines the many ways in which Charleston's black women crafted a freedom of their own design instead of accepting the limited existence imagined for them by white Southerners.

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Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society
Schuessler Institute for Social Research
1022 E. 3rd St., Room 209,
Bloomington, IN 47405
812-855-8016
Office Hours: Monday - Friday: 10:00 am – 2:00 pm

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