| Rape and Sexual Power in Early America: Contributor(s): Block, Sharon (Author) |
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ISBN: 0807857610 ISBN-13: 9780807857618 Publisher: Omohundro Institute and University of North C OUR PRICE: $30.88 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2006 Annotation: In a comprehensive examination of rape and its prosecution in British America between 1700 and 1820, 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. She demonstrates that public definitions of rape were based less on what actually happened than on who was involved. Early Americans' treatment of rape, she argues, both enacted and helped to sustain the social, racial, gender, and political hierarchies of a New World and a new nation. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - Colonial Period (1600-1775) - Social Science | Violence In Society - History | United States - Revolutionary Period (1775-1800) |
| Dewey: 364.153 |
| LCCN: 2005035320 |
| Series: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American Histo |
| Physical Information: 0.72" H x 9.12" W x 6.26" (0.98 lbs) 296 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 18th Century - Chronological Period - 19th Century - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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. |
Contributor Bio(s): Block, Sharon: - Sharon Block is associate professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. |