Hartford's Ann Plato and the Native Borders of Identity

Hartford's Ann Plato and the Native Borders of Identity
Author: Ron Welburn
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2015-04-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 143845578X
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Who was Ann Plato? Apart from circumstantial evidence, there's little information about the author of Essays; Including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Poetry, published in 1841. Plato lived in a milieu of colored Hartford, Connecticut, in the early nineteenth century. Although long believed to have been African American herself, she may also, Ron Welburn argues, have been American Indian, like the father in her poem "The Natives of America." Combining literary criticism, ethnohistory, and social history, Welburn uses Plato as an example of how Indians in the Long Island Sound region adapted and prevailed despite the contemporary rhetoric of Indian disappearance. This study seeks to raise Plato's profile as an author as well as to highlight the dynamics of Indian resistance and isolation that have contributed to her enigmatic status as a literary figure.

Thoreau's Axe

Thoreau's Axe
Author: Caleb Smith
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2024-09-24
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0691256020
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"When did the age of distraction begin? It might seem like a new problem, a symptom of our digital addictions, but distraction was already a source of deep concern in American culture two hundred years ago. As the industrial market economy emerged, nineteenth-century observers saw the signs: Workers were wasting time, daydreaming on the job, and the public's attention was overstimulated by new media and consumer trends. In response, social reformers designed innovative systems of moral training for the masses. Religious leaders organized far-reaching Christian revivals. And spiritual seekers like Henry David Thoreau experimented on themselves, practicing regimens of simplified living and transcendental mysticism. From the solitary confinement cells of the earliest penitentiaries to the shores of Walden Pond, disciplines of attention became the spiritual exercises of a distracted age. Through twenty-eight short passages on reform, religion, and literature from the strange and beautiful archives of this nineteenth-century attention revival, Caleb Smith reads with an eye for both language and power. Disciplines of attention, he argues, often reinforce a morally conservative social order. At the same time, exercising more careful control over our own attention promises to give us some distance from the consumer marketplace-and, today, from the algorithmic manipulations of the online attention economy. Smith writes with vigilance about the history of coercion, but also with guarded hope about practices of attention, including reading itself. From the benefits of attentive reading to the darker side of enforced attention in prisons and reformatories, this book examines distraction as a moral, political, and economic problem with a long and illuminating history"--

In Pursuit of Knowledge

In Pursuit of Knowledge
Author: Kabria Baumgartner
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2022-04
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1479816728
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Winner, 2021 AERA Outstanding Book Award Winner, 2021 AERA Division F New Scholar's Book Award Winner, 2020 Mary Kelley Book Prize, given by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Winner, 2020 Outstanding Book Award, given by the History of Education Society Uncovers the hidden role of girls and women in the desegregation of American education The story of school desegregation in the United States often begins in the mid-twentieth-century South. Drawing on archival sources and genealogical records, Kabria Baumgartner uncovers the story’s origins in the nineteenth-century Northeast and identifies a previously overlooked group of activists: African American girls and women. In their quest for education, African American girls and women faced numerous obstacles—from threats and harassment to violence. For them, education was a daring undertaking that put them in harm’s way. Yet bold and brave young women such as Sarah Harris, Sarah Parker Remond, Rosetta Morrison, Susan Paul, and Sarah Mapps Douglass persisted. In Pursuit of Knowledge argues that African American girls and women strategized, organized, wrote, and protested for equal school rights—not just for themselves, but for all. Their activism gave rise to a new vision of womanhood: the purposeful woman, who was learned, active, resilient, and forward-thinking. Moreover, these young women set in motion equal-school-rights victories at the local and state level, and laid the groundwork for further action to democratize schools in twentieth-century America. In this thought-provoking book, Baumgartner demonstrates that the confluence of race and gender has shaped the long history of school desegregation in the United States right up to the present.

Hopes and Expectations

Hopes and Expectations
Author: Barbara J. Beeching
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2016-12-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1438461658
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Describes in rich detail African American daily life among free blacks in the North in the 1860s. Based on a treasure trove of more than two hundred personal letters written in the 1860s, Hopes and Expectations tells the story of three young African Americans in the North. Living on Maryland’s eastern shore, schoolteacher Rebecca Primus sent “home weeklies” to her parents in Hartford and also corresponded with friend Addie Brown, a domestic worker back home. Addie wrote voluminously to Rebecca, lamenting their separation and describing her struggle to achieve a semblance of security and stability. Around the same time, Rebecca’s brother, Nelson, began writing home about his new life in Boston, as he set out to make a name and a career for himself as an artist. The letters describe their daily lives and touch on race, class, gender, religion, and politics, offering rare entry into individual black lives at that time. Through extensive archival research, Barbara J. Beeching also shows how the story of the Primus family intersects with changes over time in Hartford’s black community and the country. Newspapers and census tracts, as well as probate, land, court, and vital records help her trace an arc of local black fortunes between 1830 and 1880. Seeking full equality, blacks sought refinement and respectability through home ownership, literacy, and social gains. One of the many paradoxes Beeching uncovers is that just as the Civil War was tearing the nation apart, a recognizable black middle class was emerging in Hartford. It is a story of individuals, family, and community, of expectation and disappointment, loss and endurance, change and continuity. “This is a powerful book and a truly important story. Beeching provides a richly detailed survey of life in Connecticut, the political and racial climates at various historical moments, and the web of intraracial and interracial networks that informed the Primus family experiences. Multifaceted and thoroughly absorbing, Hopes and Expectations will reintroduce people to a New England that they thought they knew.” — Lois Brown, author of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins: Black Daughter of the Revolution

The Cambridge History of the American Essay

The Cambridge History of the American Essay
Author: Christy Wampole
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 836
Release: 2023-12-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1009080415
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From the country's beginning, essayists in the United States have used their prose to articulate the many ways their individuality has been shaped by the politics, social life, and culture of this place. The Cambridge History of the American Essay offers the fullest account to date of this diverse and complex history. From Puritan writings to essays by Indigenous authors, from Transcendentalist and Pragmatist texts to Harlem Renaissance essays, from New Criticism to New Journalism: The story of the American essay is told here, beginning in the early eighteenth century and ending with the vibrant, heterogeneous scene of contemporary essayistic writing. The essay in the US has taken many forms: nature writing, travel writing, the genteel tradition, literary criticism, hybrid genres such as the essay film and the photo essay. Across genres and identities, this volume offers a stirring account of American essayism into the twenty-first century.

Native Providence

Native Providence
Author: Patricia E. Rubertone
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2020-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496217551
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Native Providence reveals stories of Native urban life in Providence, Rhode Island, shaped by the dynamics of colonialism, race, and class and not least by the survivance of people who today live among the ruins of modernity.

Disaffected

Disaffected
Author: Xine Yao
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2021-09-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478022108
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In Disaffected Xine Yao explores the racial and sexual politics of unfeeling—affects that are not recognized as feeling—as a means of survival and refusal in nineteenth-century America. She positions unfeeling beyond sentimentalism's paradigm of universal feeling. Yao traces how works by Herman Melville, Martin R. Delany, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Sui Sin Far engaged major sociopolitical issues in ways that resisted the weaponization of white sentimentalism against the lives of people of color. Exploring variously pathologized, racialized, queer, and gendered affective modes like unsympathetic Blackness, queer female frigidity, and Oriental inscrutability, these authors departed from the values that undergird the politics of recognition and the liberal project of inclusion. By theorizing feeling otherwise as an antisocial affect, form of dissent, and mode of care, Yao suggests that unfeeling can serve as a contemporary political strategy for people of color to survive in the face of continuing racism and white fragility. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient

Indigenous Firsts

Indigenous Firsts
Author: Yvonne Wakim Dennis
Publisher: Visible Ink Press
Total Pages: 861
Release: 2022-10-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1578598060
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A celebration of achievement, accomplishments, and courage! Native American Medal of Honor recipients, Heisman Trophy recipients, U.S. Olympians, a U.S. vice president, Congressional representatives, NASA astronauts, Pulitzer Prize recipients, U.S. poet laureates, Oscar winners, and more. The first Native magician, all-Native comedy show, architects, attorneys, bloggers, chefs, cartoonists, psychologists, religious leaders, filmmakers, educators, physicians, code talkers, and inventors. Luminaries like Jim Thorpe, King Kamehameha, Debra Haaland, and Will Rogers, along with less familiar notables such as Native Hawaiian language professor and radio host Larry Lindsey Kimura and Cree/Mohawk forensic pathologist Dr. Kona Williams. Their stories plus the stories of 2000 people, events and places are presented in Indigenous Firsts: A History of Native American Achievements and Events, including … Suzanne Van Cooten, Ph.D., Chickasaw Nation, the first Native female meteorologist in the country Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, Wampanoag from Martha’s Vineyard, graduate of Harvard College in 1665 Debra Haaland, the Pueblo of Laguna, U.S. Congresswoman and Secretary of the Interior Sam Campos, the Native Hawaiian who developed the Hawaiian superhero Pineapple Man Thomas L. Sloan, Omaha, was the first Native American to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court William R. Pogue, Choctaw, astronaut Johnston Murray, Chickasaw, the first person of Native American descent to be elected governor in the United States, holding the office in Oklahoma from 1951 to 1955 The Cherokee Phoenix published its first edition February 21, 1828, making it the first tribal newspaper in North America and the first to be published in an Indigenous language The National Native American Honor Society was founded by acclaimed geneticist Dr. Frank C. Dukepoo , the first Hopi to earn a Ph.D. Louis Sockalexis, Penobscot, became the first Native American in the National Baseball League in 1897 as an outfielder with the Cleveland Spiders Jock Soto, Navajo/Puerto Rican, the youngest-ever man to be the principal dancer with the New York City Ballet The Seminole Tribe of Florida was the first Nation to own and operate an airplane manufacturing company Warrior's Circle of Honor, the National Native American Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, on the grounds of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian The Iolani Palace, constructed 1879–1882, the home of the Hawaiian royal family in Honolulu Loriene Roy, Anishinaabe, White Earth Nation, professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information, former president of the American Library Association Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Northern Cheyenne, U.S. representative and U.S. senator from Colorado Hanay Geiogamah, Kiowa /Delaware, founded the American Indian Theatre Ensemble Gerald Vizenor, White Earth Nation, writer, literary critic, and journalist for the Minneapolis Tribune Ely S. Parker (Hasanoanda, later Donehogawa), Tonawanda Seneca, lieutenant colonel in the Union Army, serving as General Ulysses S. Grant’s military secretary Fritz Scholder, Luiseno, painter inducted into the California Hall of Fame The Native American Women Warriors, the first all Native American female color guard Lori Arviso Alvord, the first Navajo woman to become a board-certified surgeon Kay “Kaibah” C. Bennett, Navajo, teacher, author, and the first woman to run for the presidency of the Navajo Nation Sandra Sunrising Osawa, Makah Indian Nation, the first Native American to have a series on commercial television The Choctaw people’s 1847 donation to aid the Irish people suffering from the great famine Otakuye Conroy-Ben, Oglala Lakota, first to earn an environmental engineering Ph.D. at the University of Arizona Diane J. Willis, Kiowa, former President of the Society of Pediatric Psychology and founding editor of the Journal of Pediatric Psychology Shelly Niro, Mohawk, winner of Canada’s top photography prize, the Scotiabank Photography Award Loren Leman, Alutiiq/Russian-Polish, was the first Alaska Native elected lieutenant governor Kim TallBear, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, the first recipient of the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Environment Carissa Moore, Native Hawaiian, won the Gold Medal in Surfing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Will Rogers, Cherokee, actor, performer, humorist was named the first honorary mayor of Beverly Hills Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations by Lois Ellen Frank, Kiowa, was the first Native American cookbook to win the James Beard Award Diane Humetewa, Hopi, nominated by President Barack Obama, became the first Native American woman to serve as a federal judge Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail, Crow, the first Native American nurse to be inducted into the American Nursing Association Hall of Fame Indigenous Firsts honors the ongoing and rich history of personal victories and triumphs, and with more than 200 photos and illustrations, this information-rich book also includes a helpful bibliography and an extensive index, adding to its usefulness. This vital collection will appeal to anyone interested in America’s amazing history and its resilient and skilled Indigenous people.

Frog Hollow

Frog Hollow
Author: Susan Campbell
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 081957855X
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Portraits of a gritty New England neighborhood and its people, with accompanying photos, reflecting waves of immigrants and tides of American history. Frog Hollow: Stories from an American Neighborhood is a collection of colorful historical vignettes of an ethnically diverse neighborhood just west of the Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford. Its 1850s row houses have been home to a wide variety of immigrants. During the Revolutionary War, Frog Hollow was a progressive hub, and later, in the mid-late nineteenth century, it was a hotbed of industry. Reporter Susan Campbell tells the true stories of Frog Hollow with a primary focus on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the inventors, entrepreneurs and workers, as well as the impact of African American migration to Hartford, the impact of the Civil Rights movement and the continuing fight for housing. Frog Hollow was also one of the first neighborhoods in the country to experiment with successful urban planning models, including public parks and free education. From European colonists to Irish and Haitian immigrants to Puerto Ricans, these stories of Frog Hollow show the multiple realities that make up a dynamic urban neighborhood. At the same time, they reflect the changing faces of American cities. “Goes into great detail about the misfortunes, the corporate decisions and the governmental missteps that contributed to bringing Frog Hollow low. But despite a sometimes sorrowful tone, the book ends on a hopeful note.” —Hartford Courant

Before Modernism

Before Modernism
Author: Virginia Jackson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2023-02-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 069123311X
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How Black poets have charted the direction of American poetics for the past two centuries Before Modernism examines how Black poetics, in antagonism with White poetics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, produced the conditions for the invention of modern American poetry. Through inspired readings of the poetry of Phillis Wheatley Peters, George Moses Horton, Ann Plato, James Monroe Whitfield, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper—as well as the poetry of neglected but once popular White poets William Cullen Bryant and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—Virginia Jackson demonstrates how Black poets inspired the direction that American poetics has taken for the past two centuries. As an idea of poetry based on genres of poems such as ballads, elegies, odes, hymns, drinking songs, and epistles gave way to an idea of poetry based on genres of people—Black, White, male, female, Indigenous—almost all poetry became lyric poetry. Jackson discusses the important role played by Frederick Douglass as an influential editor and publisher of Black poetry, and traces the twisted paths leading to our current understanding of lyric, along the way presenting not only a new history but a new theory of American poetry. A major reassessment of the origins and development of American poetics, Before Modernism argues against a literary critical narrative that links American modernism directly to British or European Romanticism, emphasizing instead the many ways in which early Black poets intervened by inventing what Wheatley called “the deep design” of American lyric.