UI Press | Edited by Mary E. Frederickson and Delores M. Walters | Gendered Resistance: Women, Slavery, and the Legacy of Margaret Garner

Gendered Resistance

Women, Slavery, and the Legacy of Margaret Garner

Global and transhistorical perspectives on women's resistance to slavery

Inspired by the story of Margaret Garner, the escaped slave who in 1856 slit her daughter's throat rather than have her forced back into slavery, the essays in this collection focus on historical and contemporary examples of slavery and women's resistance to oppression from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Garner's story offered the narrative for Toni Morrison's Beloved and the opera Margaret Garner. Each chapter in this volume uses Garner's example as a thematic foundation.

Drawing on history, anthropology, and artistic imagination to open an interdisciplinary conversation about gendered resistance, the book first addresses gendered resistance in the United States during the early nineteenth century, before turning to twenty-first century global slavery. Paying close attention to the historical and cultural representations of women of color around the world, contributors examine the psychological consequences of trauma and sexual violence in a number of geographic locations, including Brazil, Yemen, India, and the United States.

Contributors are Nailah Randall Bellinger, Olivia Cousins, Mary E. Frederickson, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, Carolyn Mazloomi, Cathy McDaniels-Wilson, Catherine Roma, Huda Seif, S. Pearl Sharp, Raquel Luciana de Souza, Jolene Smith, Veta Tucker, Delores M. Walters, Diana Williams, and Kristine Yohe.

"Gendered Resistance offers valuable insight to the intersectionality of race, gender, and socioeconomic class by challenging cultural and historical interpretations of enslaved women's resistance. Moreover, it traces important continuities in gender based violence and race from the past to the present."--Civil War Book Review

"Gendered Resistance is appealing for its boldness in ignoring disciplinary boundaries and time constraints to present a new framework for considering gendered resistance."--The Journal of African American History

"This excellent collection situates and contemporizes the history and legacy of Margaret Garner and the history of enslavement of women. Full of useful perspectives and critical analysis, this interdisciplinary volume of essays is perfect for students of American history, literature, gender, race, and cultural studies."--Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero

Mary E. Frederickson is a professor of history at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and a visiting professor in The Graduate Institute for Liberal Arts at Emory University. She is the author of Looking South: Race, Gender, and the Transformation of Labor from Reconstruction to Globalization. Delores M. Walters is a cultural anthropology consultant and the Director of Faculty Recruitment and Retention and an Associate Dean for Diversity at the University of Rhode Island.

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