Imperfect Unions
Staging Miscegenation in U.S. Drama and Fiction
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7309626 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alison Holder (Pratt Institute, corresponding author), A S Holder |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 100 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 223-223 |
| Publication date | 2013-06-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jat093 |
| OpenAlex | W2066010604 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
Diana Rebekkah Paulin's rich study breaks new ground by placing the conjoined construction of race and sexuality at the center of historical shifts from the Civil War to World War I. Focusing on the literary trope of miscegenation, Imperfect Unions unpacks a disturbingly marginalized aspect of U.S. racial history. Paulin's work joins an emerging scholarship that is recasting blackness and whiteness as mutually constitutive elements in a deeply unequal but dynamic relation: illusory, highly charged, and haunted by a legacy of sexual and physical violence. In addition to her innovative contributions, Paulin's generous engagement with other scholars provides an excellent introduction to that broader conversation. Imperfect Unions vividly demonstrates the way miscegenation, best known for its role in galvanizing the forces of white supremacy, exposes the instability at the heart of U.S. racial ideologies. These revelations of racial liminality offered a fertile source for alternative reimaginings and a basis for challenging the emerging status quo of racialized citizenship. This is persuasively shown in her readings of the post-Reconstruction writer Charles W. Chesnutt. In both the exploitative and the consensual histories of interracial reproduction, Chesnutt found resources to assert affinities that confounded racial categorization and challenged developing racial codes
Aesthetics · Art · Drama · Human sexuality · Ideology · Liminality · Literature · Political science · Politics · Racism · Scholarship · Sociology · Status quo · Trope (literature · White supremacy · Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research · Gender Studies · History · Law · Theatre and Performance Studies
| Citations per year | 0.11 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2017 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |