Racial innocence : performing American childhood from slavery to civil rights / Robin Bernstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bernstein, Robin, 1969-

Contributor:

ebrary, Inc.

Series:

America and the long 19th century

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slavery--United States--History.

Slavery.

United States.

History.

Racism in literature.

Children in literature.

United States--Race relations.

Race relations.

United States--Civilization.

Civilization.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 307 pages), 10 pages) of color plates : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

New York : NYU Press, 2011.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

In Racial Innocence, Robin Bernstein argues that the concept of "childhood innocence" has been central to U.S. racial formation since the mid-nineteenth century. Children-white ones imbued with innocence, black ones excluded from it, and others of color erased-figured pivotally in sharply divergent racial agendas from slavery and abolition to antiblack violence and the early civil rights movement.

Bernstein takes up a rich archive including books, toys, theatrical props, and domestic knickknacks which she analyzes as "scriptive things" that invite or prompt historically-located practices while allowing for resistance and social improvisation. Integrating performance studies with literary and visual analysis, Bernstein offers singular readings of theatrical productions from blackface minstrelsy to Uncle Tom's Cabin to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; literary works by Joel Chandler Harris, Harriet Wilson, and Frances Hodgson Burnett; material culture including Topsy pincushions, Uncle Tom and Little Eva handkerchiefs, and Raggedy Ann dolls; and visual texts ranging from fine portraiture to advertisements for lard substitute. Throughout, Bernstein shows how "innocence" gradually became the exclusive province of white children- until the Civil Rights Movement succeeded not only in legally desegregating public spaces, but in culturally desegregating the concept of childhood itself. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Tender Angels, Insensate Pickaninnies: The Divergent Paths of Racial Innocence 30

2 Scriptive Things 69

3 Everyone Is Impressed: Slavery as a Tender Embrace from Uncle Tom's to Uncle Remus's Cabin 92

4 The Black-and-Whiteness of Raggedy Ann 146

5 The Scripts of Black Dolls 194.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Electronic reproduction. Palo Alto, Calif. : ebrary, 2013. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ebrary affiliated libraries.

OCLC:

756634886

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.