Walter Johnson’s “On Agency” and 19th Century Scholarship

Published on Author Erika

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 Walter Johnson’s “On Agency” and 19th Century Scholarship

Gender in 19th Century United States

Published on Author Erika

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 Gender in 19th Century United States

Civil War Transnationalism

Published on Author Erika

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 Civil War Transnationalism

Borderlands COMPS Recap

Published on Author Erika

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 Borderlands COMPS Recap

Civil War COMPS Recap

Published on Author Erika

             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 Civil War COMPS Recap

The Crisis of Imprisonment

Published on Author Erika

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 The Crisis of Imprisonment

The Problem South

Published on Author Erika

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 The Problem South

Black Reconstruction

Published on Author Erika

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 Black Reconstruction