Walter Johnson’s article in the Journal of Social History, “On Agency,” raises important questions about the limits of using agency as a lens to study enslaved peoples. One of his biggest contentions is that agency has often been inextricably linked to any type of enslaved resistance and to proving the preservation of their “humanity.” Johnson… Continue reading →

Over the past fifty years gender has become a significant category of historical analysis across various disciplines. The study of gender has altered traditional narratives of the antebellum and postbellum United States, which typically privileged the elite white male perspective. Gender histories have, instead, highlighted the experiences of previously marginalized groups such as free black… Continue reading →

Recent approaches to Civil War history have called for broadening the spatial lens beyond United States national borders. Historians such as Don H. Doyle, Edward Rugemer and Michael Woods have emphasized the international influence on American tensions leading toward the Civil War and Emancipation. The transnationalist perspectives have added a layer to the abundant Civil… Continue reading →

The historiography of borderlands has evolved greatly over the course of the twentieth century and twenty-first century. The two fathers of borderlands history were Frederick Jackson Turner, who made the frontier and the American West a hot topic among scholars beginning in the 1890s, and Herbert Eugene Bolton who popularized the concept of Spanish borderlands… Continue reading →

The era of Emancipation has been studied through multiple points of view including former slaves, abolitionists, politicians and white supremacists. This time period proved to be confusing and complicated for many Americans as they sought to figure out what this meant for the future and how their lifestyle would, or would not, be transformed. Moreover,… Continue reading →

             Scholars have analyzed the ways in which race, class, and gender shaped the experiences of both soldiers and civilians in one of the most tumultuous eras of American history, the Civil War.             Questions about race have looked at how the African American Civil War experience differed from whites.… Continue reading →

Rebecca McLennan, The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the making of the American Penal State, 1776-1941 From the American Revolution to World War II the United States penal system underwent vast transformations, specifically in regards to prison-based punishment. Rebecca McLennan’s The Crisis of Imprisonment traces the evolution of the penal system and argues that… Continue reading →

Natalie Ring, The Problem South: Region, Empire, and the New Liberal State, 1880-1930   The United States South was ridden with problems following the Civil War and Reconstruction—at least according to northern Americans.  From roughly 1880-1930 there was a desire to “readjust” and “uplift” the South to successfully reconcile the nation. Unfortunately, reconciling the nation… Continue reading →

W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction: an essay toward a history of the part which Black folk played in the attempt to reconstruct democracy in America, 1860-1880   W.E.B. Du Bois, an imminent African American scholar of the early twentieth century, published a groundbreaking interpretation of black influence during the era of Reconstruction in his 1935… Continue reading →

Adam Rothman, Beyond Freedom’s Reach: a kidnapping in the twilight of slavery The readings of the past few weeks have touched upon the agency of slaves, former slaves, and free people of color. Thavolia Glymph’s Out of the House of Bondage and Stephen Kantrowitz’s More than Freedom both explore the ways in which people of… Continue reading →