An Inquiry into Liberty,Slavery, and Thomas Jefferson’s Place in American Memory

Abstract

This article presents a guided inquiry into Thomas Jefferson’s place in American memory. It centers on Jefferson’s liberty-based articulations and his involvement in slavery, which are paradoxical when juxtaposed. Evocative primary sources and competing secondary sources ground the inquiry. Discipline-specific strategies direct students through the stages of inquiry. Close reading, text-based writing, and informed action intertwine with history literacy, historical thinking, and historical argumentation. Discussion focuses on logical curricular extensions.     

The British,Persecuted Foreigners and the Emergence of the Refugee Category in Nineteenth-Century Britain

For most of the nineteenth century, there were no barriers to immigration into Britain, and hence little need for the British to distinguish one foreigner from another. Despite this fact, philanthropists, officials and public commentators identified some foreigners as ‘refugees’, a designation that called for national sympathy. How and why did this category emerge? What were its inclusions and exclusions? This essay traces the expansion of the refugee category in the context of British commitments to European liberals and foreign slaves in the second quarter of the century. It argues that, by the 1840s, would-be refugees and their British supporters established a standard narrative from which audiences were meant to recognise particular foreigners as refugees and respond accordingly.     

Teaching Black History after Obama

This article is a reflection on the teaching of black history after the Obama presidency and at the dawn of the Trump era. It is both an analysis of the state of the academic field and a primer on how to integrate the past few decades of scholarship in black history broadly across standard K-12 curriculum. It demonstrates the importance of theorizing black history as American history rather than just including African American content in US History courses and offers specific methods that can shift the narrative in this direction even within the confines of a more traditional telling of the American past. Finally, it situates the voluminous work of historians of the black past as critical interventions in pedagogy necessary to challenge today's unrelenting attacks on public education.     

I'm Not for Sale: Teaching About Human Trafficking

Even though slavery is illegal in all countries, it is still practiced in the form of human trafficking. In fact, there are about twenty-five million men, women, and children who are victims of human trafficking, a 150-billion-dollar industry that affects every country across the globe. Modern communications, such as the Internet and cell phones, exacerbate the problem of human trafficking and law enforcement faces enormous challenges in detecting, arresting, and prosecuting human traffickers. Victims, fifty percent of whom are children, are sold into prostitution, forced marriages, and forced labor in sweatshops, agriculture, and mining. Additionally, some victims are forced into armed conflicts as children; others are killed and their organs are harvested and sold on the black market. It is estimated that 50,000 victims are brought into the United States annually. Human trafficking is a moral outrage, as well as a violation of American and international law. Social studies education must teach about this egregious human rights violation and encourage students to become involved in stopping this modern-day slavery. By incorporating lessons into their curricula, all teachers can help produce young citizens dedicated to protecting human rights for all people.     

Surplus,excess, dirt: slavery and the production of disposability in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Centuries before apartheid, South Africa was fundamentally shaped by 176 years of slavery, a period of racialised and gendered brutality that lasted from 1658 to 1834. Enslaved people were brought to the Cape by the Dutch East India Company from African and Asian territories around the Indian Ocean, and eventually came to constitute the majority of the population of the Colony. Françoise Vergès (2005 Vergès, F. 2005. “One World, Many Maps.” Interventions 7 (3): 342–345. doi:10.1080/13698010500268155.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) asserts that slavery in South Africa generated “processes of disposability” that transformed enslaved people and indigenous Africans, the majority of the population, into “surplus” and expendable objects. The scale of this expendability is difficult to discern today because of the invisibility of slavery in conceptions of the country’s history. In this article, I use the lens of “dirt” to render such “processes of disposability” visible. I do so by analysing two texts in which African bodies are portrayed as filthy, menacing and contaminating – the novel Unconfessed and a television advertisement titled “Papa Wag Vir Jou” (“Daddy’s Waiting for You”) – which I situate within a discussion of South Africa’s extraordinarily high rates of incarceration and sexual violence. I point to the seamless continuity in industrial levels of imprisonment employed by the colonial and the modern South African state.     

Between Neo-liberalism and Neo-indigenismo: Reconstructing National Identity in Mexico

Heightened integration with the US coupled with the rise of an indigenous movement have challenged and strained long-held images regarding the US and the indigenous within Mexico. As a result, Mexico finds itself facing the difficult task of re-evaluating and reconstructing its national identity. This paper explores the traditional images of the US and the Indian shaping national identity in Mexico and the challenges posed today by neo-liberalism and neo-indigenismo. It sets out a range of current issues, explores the linkages and contradictions, and examines the state of national reform. Fundamentally, the paper strives to raise important theoretical questions and hence set the stage for further research into these issues.     

“飘”向旧体制还是“飘”向新文明

小说《飘》由于书名和书中大量篇幅关于南方种植园主阶级对往昔生活的眷恋追忆和对北军解放黑奴的仇恨描写，曾引起评论界广泛争议，认为小说是在维护旧的奴隶制度，否定资本主义新文明。通过对历史发展的必然性和规律性及书中主人公在历史潮流推动下从行动的不自觉向思想的自觉的转变过程，揭示《飘》的思想主题并非历史的反动，而是在蓄奴制烟雾笼罩下升起的实力前进的灯火。     

古代希腊文化繁荣原因述论

古代希腊文化高度繁荣，研究其文化繁荣的原因具有重要的启迪作用。古代希腊奴隶制经济的繁荣和民主政治的高度发展，为文化繁荣提供了必要的物质前提和良好的政治环境。古希腊人民对本民族文化遗产和外来文化关系的正确处理及独特的民族特征，使其文化在高起点之上多元发展，取得了辉煌的成就，为人类文化的发展做出了重要贡献。     

奥古斯丁论奴隶制

围绕着奴隶制的起源、奴隶的社会地位、奴隶主和奴隶的关系等问题,著名的古代基督教思想家奥古斯丁作了较多的论述,他的奴隶制观在西方古代思想史上占有相当重要的地位。本文立足于对其拉丁文本的分析,分个人态度、社会秩序观与基督教伦理三方面,系统地探讨了奥古斯丁对奴隶和奴隶制的认识,指出其奴隶制观既在一定程度上体现了基督教的人道主义精神,又具有明显的历史局限性。