Synopses & Reviews
The color line, once all too solid in southern public life, still exists in the study of southern history. As distinguished historian Nell Irvin Painter notes, historians often still write about the South as though people of different races occupied entirely different spheres. In truth, although blacks and whites were expected to remain in their assigned places in the southern social hierarchy, their lives were thoroughly entangled.
In this powerful collection, Painter reaches across the color line to examine how race, gender, class, and individual subjectivity shaped the lives of black and white women and men in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century South. Through six essays, she explores such themes as interracial sex, white supremacy, and the physical and psychological violence of slavery, using insights gleaned from psychology and feminist social science as well as social, cultural, and intellectual history.
At once pioneering and reflective, the book illustrates both the breadth of Painter's interests and the originality of her intellectual contributions. It will inspire and guide a new generation of historians who take her goal of transcending the color bar as their own.
Review
An important and welcome collection. Her essays are always timely, telling, and provocative. They take risks and often seek to confound categories, topically and conceptually. And they chart the intellectual range and growth of one of our leading historians and teachers. (Steven Hahn, Northwestern University)
Review
Nell Irvin Painter is one of the major historians of our time. This invaluable collection brings together work that has influenced a generation of scholars and will continue to shape scholarship for the foreseeable future. (Hazel V. Carby, Yale University)
Review
"Demonstrate[s] excellence marked by the transgressive verve of [an] innovative and progressive scholar. . . . An extremely successful attempt to move with intellectual rigor and consistency toward a meaningful interpretation of a world mapped in blood by cruelty and violence."
Southern Literary Journal
Synopsis
In six thought-provoking essays, distinguished historian Nell Irvin Painter explores the ways in which race, gender, and class shaped the lives of black and white women and men in the 19th- and 20th-century South. Her introduction urges historians to bridge the racial divide that has existed in the study of southern history.
About the Author
Nell Irvin Painter is Edwards Professor of American History at Princeton University. She is author or editor of six previous books, including Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.