In this episode of the Philippe
Matthews Show LIVE, we are going to uncover yet another dark secret of slavery in
African American and
Anglo Saxon histrory as it relates to women being able to heal the epigenetic, systemic injury of
Slave Breeding:
Sex, Violence and
Memory in
African American History (
http://amzn.to/1LPTtRA) with
Professor Gregory Smithers.
For over two centuries, the topic of slave breeding has occupied a controversial place in the master narrative of
American history. From nineteenth-century abolitionists to twentieth-century filmmakers and artists,
Americans have debated whether slave owners deliberately and coercively manipulated the sexual practices and marital status of enslaved
African Americans to reproduce new generations of slaves for profit.
In this bold and provocative book, historian
Gregory Smithers investigates how African Americans have narrated, remembered, and represented slave-breeding practices. He argues that while social and economic historians have downplayed the significance of slave breeding, African Americans have refused to forget the violence and sexual coercion associated with the plantation
South. By placing African American histories and memories of slave breeding within the larger context of
America’s history of racial and gender discrimination, Smithers sheds much-needed light on African American collective memory, racialized perceptions of fragile black families, and the long history of racially motivated violence against men, women, and children of color.
Awards
Honorable mention,
Deep South Book Prize, 2014, Summersell
Center for the
Study of the South
Praise for Slave Breeding:
“As engaging as it is compelling, bold, and captivating, Smithers’s Slave Breeding pulls the reader through its pages with heart-wrenching exposition of the dark and ugly chapter of what could rightly be characterized as the sexual zeitgeist of
American national history.”--TUNDE ADELEKE
"Underscores the broad meaning of the continuing debates over sexual violence during and after slavery, the centrality of the African American family, and white hypocrisy."
CHOICE
"A thought-provoking piece of scholarship that sheds light on the complex history of slave breeding in America. Smithers's book will be hotly debated in the profession."
MICHAEL L. ONDAATJE
"Slave Breeding makes a powerful case not just to reexamine sexual exploitation under slavery and the power of memory as an historical tool but also to interrogate accepted historical narratives."
Journal of American History Vol.
100, no. 3 (
2013)
“Boldly and persuasively challenges received wisdom about the American narrative during the last two centuries.”
Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol
. 44, no. 2 (2013)
About Professor Gregory Smithers
Professor Gregory Smithers is an a historian of
Native America with research and teaching interests that seek to explore the entangled histories of
Native American and
African American people. He is also interested in intellectual and cultural history, comparative
Indigenous history, and the history of race and racism. He is currently working on
Science,
Sexuality, and
Race in the United States and
Australia, 1780s-1890s (Revised 2nd edition,
University of Nebraska Press), and have begun working on a Native American environmental history of the
Southeast.
Recent publications include, "Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History" (
University Press of Florida, 2013), "
Native Diasporas; Indigenous Identities and
Settler Colonialism in the
Americas," edited by Gregory Smithers and
Brooke Newman, (University of
Nebraska Press, 2014), "Racism in American
Popular Media: From
Aunt Jemima to the
Frito Bandito with
Brian D. Behnken" (Praeger,
2015), and "
The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous
History of
Migration,
Resettlement, and
Identity" (
Yale University Press, 2015).
CONNECT:
Twitter http://bit.ly/1LPQusy
Website http://bit.ly/1LPQB7g
Facebook http://on.fb.me/1LPQQiE
Tumblr http://bit.ly/1LPQXe9
RELATED:
Out of Darkness Film Review with Amadeuz Christ - http://bit.ly/1LPSnp7
How Africans Turned
White and How White Will
Become Brown - http://bit.ly/1LPStNt
(Part 1) The Epigenetics of
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (
PTSS) with Dr. Joy DeGruy - http://bit.ly/1LPSHEh
- published: 09 Oct 2015
- views: 1920