Fathers of Conscience with Bernie D. Jones

Posted in Audio, History, Interviews, Law, Live Events, Media Archive, Slavery, United States on 2012-11-04 23:16Z by Steven

Fathers of Conscience with Bernie D. Jones

Research at the National Archives & Beyond
Blogtalk Radio
2012-11-08, 21:00 EST (2012-11-09, 02:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Co-Host

Natonne Elaine Kemp, Co-Host

Bernie D. Jones, Associate Professor of Law
Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts

Fathers of Conscience: Mixed-Race Inheritance in the Antebellum South

Bernice Bennett and Natonne Elaine Kemp welcome author Bernie D. Jones for an engaging discussion about her book—Fathers of Conscience: Mixed-Race Inheritance in the Antebellum South. Jones is Associate Professor, Suffolk University Law School.  She is a graduate of the New York University Law School and the University of Virginia Department of History.

Fathers of Conscience examines high-court decisions in the antebellum South that involved wills in which white male planters bequeathed property, freedom, or both to women of color and their mixed-race children. These men, whose wills were contested by their white relatives, had used trusts and estates law to give their slave partners and children official recognition and thus circumvent the law of slavery. The will contests that followed determined whether that elevated status would be approved or denied by courts of law.

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Figuring Abjection: The Slave Mother in the Early Creole Novel

Posted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Slavery on 2012-11-04 02:46Z by Steven

Figuring Abjection: The Slave Mother in the Early Creole Novel

French Studies
Volume 67, Issue 1, January 2013
pages 61-75
DOI: 10.1093/fs/kns232

Maeve McCusker
School of Modern Languages
Queen’s University Belfast

While twentieth-century Caribbean literature in French has generated a substantial body of criticism, earlier writings have largely been neglected. This article begins by contextualizing the Creole novel of the 1830s in cultural and historical terms, then proceeds to analyse two novels published by Martinican authors in 1835: Outre-mer by Louis de Maynard de Queilhe and Les Créoles by Jules Levilloux. The few studies that exist of these texts tend to contrast their portrayal of the (male) mulatto; Levilloux has generally been considered the more progressive writer in this regard. However, both writers are in striking harmony in their depiction of the black mother, a figure (in both senses, as her physiognomy is central in her portrayal) who has until now been overlooked. In Outre-mer, as in Les Créoles, the elderly black mother is an abject and wretched creature, a source of phobic disgust. She has necessarily to be shown to be repulsive, filthy, and morally hideous in old age in order to counteract the fascination she provokes, and to embody a phantasized repellent to the desires of the white male.

Read or purchase the article here.

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