Historiography

This exemplifies the dangers of using one plantation as the representative for an entire system, especially one that seems to be the exception rather than the rule in several ways. It is interesting that Dunn criticizes the traditional slavery historiography, claiming historians usually focus “on the most visible people; e.g., those who run away, wrote about themselves, or were in other ways remarkable” (2). Yet Dunn does just that by focusing on the Mount Airy plantation. The Tayloe family was…

In Sylvia Wynter’s (1990) seminal essay, “Beyond Miranda’s Meanings: Un/Silencing the ‘Demonic Ground’ of Caliban’s Woman,” the scholar argues that Western Europe’s colonization of the Americas and Africa shifted the ways in which Europeans conceived of difference. Rather than the use of sex characteristics, which had previously been the defining marker of distinction, “the cultural-physiognomic variations between the dominant expanding European civilization and the non-Western peoples that,…

Numerous scholars blatantly use the word “new” when highlighting the phenomena of moving images in the white cube. For example, Noam Elcott enthusiastically claims that new historiographies emerged due to new ways of screening in the post-war era. Chrissie Iles has claimed definitively that film installation began in the 1960s, as both the end and beginning of an era. Erika Balsom has also claimed that the emergence of 16mm film…

In A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, author Lizabeth Cohen focuses on how the American culture of abundance and consumption influenced many political, socioeconomic and cultural changes in the decades proceeding the end of World War II. She argues that mass consumerism is deeply rooted in the modern American experience. Cohen first uses the prologue of A Consumers' Republic to introduce her own personal story, having grown up during the beginnings of the…

In her book, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico, Maria Elena Martinez exposes the relationship between limpieza de sangre and the sistema de castas through its origins in fifthteen-century Spain and its ambiguous implications in Spanish America. Originally containing religious connotations during the Spanish Inquisition over concerns of converted Jews and Muslims to Christianity, Martinez attempts to answer the question of how and why the notion of…

in South America and Shanghai, as well as describing the USA as being ‘honorary’ British during the World Wars. The authors’ intentions are to promote study into this ‘relatively new’ area of study, and therefore are attempting to broaden the historiography of the British World. They ultimately argue that this ‘world’ was a consensual association; one where co-operation, equality and autonomy increased post-1918, as opposed to the typical view of coercion and force being dominant factors. They…

question: How did the United States’ oppressive treatment of Mexican-Americans affect the formation of the their identity in the Southwestern United States from 1848-1900? In order to answer this question, it is important to examine the subject’s historiography. The scholars’ work that most helps me with my research can be divided into three main themes—the mistreatment of Mexican-Americans in the Southwest, the establishment of a Mexican ethnic awareness, and the development of alternative…

The long and tortuous annals of World Military history had seen nothing comparable to the incidents that occurred during WWI. Known as the ‘War to end all wars’, WWI ended endless amounts lives in the hundreds of thousands. From August 1914 two battlefronts stretched from the far alpines of Switzerland to the channel coast of France and from Ukrainian countryside to the cold Baltic Sea. Offensives had been staged on both fronts, however one was left to prevail and by 1918 both sides saw maximum…

Fast food employees are deceived by the business just as much as the people who consume fast food. One out of every eight workers in the United States has by some point in time been employed by McDonald's alone. (p.4) With the increased intake of fast food, has come the increased intake of profit for franchise owners. This in turn allows them to hire more employees and add to the work force. A typical fast food employee is an adolescent who is under the age of twenty. He or she will lack full…

Kashmir: Roots of Conflict Paths to Peace Sumantra Bose Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003, pp. 307 Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace by Sumantra Bose is a well-researched and engagingly written book on the contemporary history of Kashmir. It doesn 't take a myopic view of the Kashmir conflict as a ‘territorial-dispute,’ but looks at it through a broader lens, taking into account the complexity of society and politics in the region. The book tries to shift the focus of the…