Rape and sexual power in early America / Sharon Block.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Block, Sharon, 1968- author.

Contributor:

Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture.

Series:

Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rape--United States--History.

Rape.

Sex crimes--United States--History.

Sex crimes.

United States--History--18th century.

United States.

United States--History--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (293 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill, [North Carolina] : Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In a comprehensive examination of rape and its prosecution in British America between 1700 and 1820, Sharon Block exposes the dynamics of sexual power on which colonial and early republican Anglo-American society was based.Block analyzes the legal, social, and cultural implications of more than nine hundred documented incidents of sexual coercion and hundreds more extralegal commentaries found in almanacs, newspapers, broadsides, and other print and manuscript sources. Highlighting the gap between reports of coerced sex and incidents that were publicly classified as rape, Block demonstrates that public definitions of rape were based less on what actually happened than on who was involved. She challenges conventional narratives that claim sexual relations between white women and black men became racially charged only in the late nineteenth century. Her analysis extends racial ties to rape back into the colonial period and beyond the boundaries of the southern slave-labor system. Early Americans' treatment of rape, Block argues, both enacted and helped to sustain the social, racial, gender, and political hierarchies of a New World and a new nation.

Contents:

Contents; Acknowledgments; List of Illustrations; Archival Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Consent and Coercion: The Continuum of Sexual Relations; 2. The Means of Sexual Coercion: Identity, Power, and Social Consent; 3. After Coerced Sex: The Progression of Knowledge; 4. The Crime of Rape: Transatlantic Standards, American Racialization, and Local Judgment; 5. Constructing Rape and Race at Early American Courts; 6. New Worlds of Rape: Masculinity, Myth, and Revolution; Conclusion; Appendix A: Tabulation of Known Sexual Coercion Incidents; Appendix B: Legal Records Consulted; Index; A; B; C

DE; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M; N; O; P; R; S; T; V; W; Y

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

979-88-908781-0-6

0-8078-3893-4

1-4696-0097-8

OCLC:

966836457