Heartsick and Astonished
Heartsick and Astonished

Author: Allison Dorothy Fredette

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2023-05-15

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0820364304

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Heartsick and Astonished features twenty-seven divorce cases from mid-nineteenth century America. More than dry legal documents, these cases provide a captivating window into marital life-and strife-in the border South during the tumultuous years before, during, and after the Civil War. Allison Dorothy Fredette has brought these primary documents to light, revealing the inner thoughts, legal hardships, and day-to-day struggles of these average citizens. In Wheeling, West Virginia, the seat of Ohio County, courtrooms bore witness to men and women from various ethnic, racial, and class backgrounds who shared shockingly intimate details of their lives and relationships. Some tried desperately to defend their masculinity or femininity; others hoped to restore their reputations to the legal system and to their community. In an era of uncertainty-when the country was torn in two, when the Wheeling community became the capital of a new state, and when activists across the country began to push for women's rights in the household and family-the divorce cases of ordinary couples reveal changing attitudes toward marriage, gender, and legal separation in a booming border city perched on the edge of the South.

Slavery and the University
Slavery and the University

Author: Leslie Maria Harris

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2019-02-01

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 0820354422

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Slavery and the University is the first edited collection of scholarly essays devoted solely to the histories and legacies of this subject on North American campuses and in their Atlantic contexts. Gathering together contributions from scholars, activists, and administrators, the volume combines two broad bodies of work: (1) historically based interdisciplinary research on the presence of slavery at higher education institutions in terms of the development of proslavery and antislavery thought and the use of slave labor; and (2) analysis on the ways in which the legacies of slavery in institutions of higher education continued in the post-Civil War era to the present day. The collection features broadly themed essays on issues of religion, economy, and the regional slave trade of the Caribbean. It also includes case studies of slavery's influence on specific institutions, such as Princeton University, Harvard University, Oberlin College, Emory University, and the University of Alabama. Though the roots of Slavery and the University stem from a 2011 conference at Emory University, the collection extends outward to incorporate recent findings. As such, it offers a roadmap to one of the most exciting developments in the field of U.S. slavery studies and to ways of thinking about racial diversity in the history and current practices of higher education.