Bøger udgivet af University Press of Florida

An up-closeview of the movement to make "Afro-Mexican" an official cultural category Through historical and ethnographic research, Blackness in Mexico delvesinto the ongoing movement toward recognizing Black Mexicans as a cultural groupwithin a nation that has long viewed the non-Black Mestizo as the archetypal citizen. Anthony Jerry focuses on this process in Mexico'sCosta Chica region in order to explore the relational aspects of citizenshipand the place of Black people in how modern citizenship is imagined. Jerry's study of the Costa Chica shows the politicalstakes of the national project for Black recognition; the shared but competinginterests of the Mexican government, activists, and townspeople; and the waysthat the state and NGOs are working to make "Afro-Mexican" an official culturalcategory. He argues that that the demand for recognition by Black communities callsattention to how the Mestizo has become an intuitive point of referencefor identifying who qualifies as "other." Jerry also demonstrates that whileofficial recognition can potentially empower African descendants, it cansimultaneously reproduce the same logics of difference that have brought abouttheir social and political exclusion. One of few books to center Blackness within adiscussion of Mexico or to incorporate a focus on Mexico into Black studies, this book ultimately argues that the official project for recognition is itselfa methodology of mestizaje, an opportunity for the government to continue to use Blackness todefine the national subject and to further the Mexican national project. A volume in the series New World Diasporas, edited by KevinA. Yelvington Publicationof this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the AmericanRescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Highlighting Bethune's global activism and her connections throughout the African diaspora This book examines the Pan-Africanism of Mary McLeod Bethune through her work, which internationalized the scope of Black women's organizations to create solidarity among Africans throughout the diaspora. Broadening the familiar view of Bethune as an advocate for racial and gender equality within the United States, Ashley Preston argues that Bethune consistently sought to unify African descendants around the world with her writings, through travel, and as an advisor.Preston shows how Bethune's early involvement with Black women's organizations created personal connections across Cuba, Haiti, India, and Africa and shaped her global vision. Bethune founded and led the National Council of Negro Women, which strengthened coalitions with women across the diaspora to address issues in their local communities. Bethune served as director of the Division of Negro Affairs for the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and later as associate consultant for the United Nations alongside W.E.B. DuBois and Walter White, using her influence to address diversity in the military, decolonization, suffrage, and imperialism. Mary McLeod Bethune the Pan-Africanist provides a fuller, more accurate understanding of Bethune's work, illustrating the perspective and activism behind Bethune's much-quoted words: "For I am my mother's daughter, and the drums of Africa still beat in my heart." Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Examining a century of dance criticism in the United States and its influence on aesthetics and inclusionDance criticism has long been integral to dance as an art form, serving as documentation and validation of dance performances, yet few studies have taken a close look at the impact of key critics and approaches to criticism over time. The first book to examine dance criticism in the United States across 100 years, from the late 1920s to the early twenty-first century, Shaping Dance Canons argues that critics in the popular press have influenced how dance has been defined and valued, as well as which artists and dance forms have been taken most seriously. Kate Mattingly likens the effect of dance writing to that of a flashlight, illuminating certain aesthetics at the expense of others. Mattingly shows how criticism can preserve and reproduce criteria for what qualifies as high art through generations of writers and in dance history courses, textbooks, and curricular design. She examines the gatekeeping role of prominent critics such as John Martin and Yvonne Rainer while highlighting the often-overlooked perspectives of writers from minoritized backgrounds and dance traditions. The book also includes an analysis of digital platforms and current dance projects--On the Boards TV, thINKingDANCE, Black Dance Stories, and amara tabor-smith's House/Full of BlackWomen--that challenge systemic exclusions. In doing so, the book calls for ongoing dialogue and action to make dance criticism more equitable and inclusive.

Although in theory deconstruction has pronounced dead the idea of literature as a special category, in practice is has fostered what might be called a literature of a library of deconstruction. In exploring works by seven twentieth-century writers - Tzara, Beckett, Leiris, Blanchot, Joyce, Sollers, and Des Forets - Beitchman focuses on the shared qualities that make them central texts in the literature of deconstruction and in so doing reveals the main tensions that form our postmodernist sensibility. In commentaries that participate in and extend the method and spirit of the particular works under discussion, Beitchman traces the radical effects in literature of these writers' taking romanticism and symbolism one, two, ten, a hundred steps further: writer and reader, creator and critic, dissolve and merge; character and plot become problematic, confusing; the declarative is usurped by the interrogative; all goal, all finality are vanquished by the uncertain, the circular, and the incomplete. Ultimately, art itself is toppled from its pedestal of privilege and exclusive status. Whether showing how Beckett empties language of its referential function and prevents its acquiring a mystical one, or tracing in Blanchot and others the themes of nomadism and vagrancy, or exploring how any structure Joyce erects becomes swamped in a seat of incessant qualification and exception, Beitchman explores the texts' ramifications with sympathy and a wide range of reference. Framing his seven essays are a substantial introduction and an eloquent conclusion, in which he focuses on the themes of madness, theater, and text and thereby sums up his study while underscoring the challenges posed by the literature of deconstruction. Enormously well informed and compellingly written, I Am a Process with No Subject subtly balances the demands of a history of ideas with those of a literary history to reveal the literature of deconstruction as the characteristic and perhaps the inevitable form of literary expression in the twentieth century.

"An exceptional piece of scholarship. Rossano clearly points out that military organizations in general, and a naval air force in particular, are built from the ground up and not the other way around. While we celebrate the exploits of the pilots, Rossano reminds us that there were myriad mechanics, constructors, paymasters, and even some ship drivers who played a vital role in naval aviation during WWI."--Craig C. Felker, U.S. Naval Academy "A fine book that will stand for many years as the definitive study of U.S. naval aviation in Europe. Well-researched and written, the book ranges widely, from the high-level planning in Washington for a naval air war to moving thousands of men and hundreds of aircraft across the ocean to the routine but dangerous training, patrol, and bombing flights that constituted the navy's air mission in World War I."--William F. Trimble, author of Attack from the Sea Stalking the U-Boatis the first and only comprehensive study of U.S. naval aviation operations in Europe during WWI. The navy's experiences in this conflict laid the foundations for the later emergence of aviation as a crucial--sometimes dominant--element of fleet operations, yet those origins have been previously poorly understood and documented.Begun as antisubmarine operations, naval aviation posed enormous logistical, administrative, personnel, and operational problems. How the USN developed this capability--on foreign soil in the midst of desperate conflict--makes a fascinating tale sure to appeal to all military and naval historians.

Ceramics serve as one of the best-known artifacts excavated by archaeologists. They are carefully described, classified, and dated, but rarely do scholars consider their many and varied uses. Breaking from this convention, Myriam Arcangeli examines potsherds from four colonial sites in the Antillean island of Guadeloupe to discover what these everyday items tell us about the people who used them. In the process, she reveals a wealth of information about the lives of the elite planters, the middle and lower classes, and enslaved Africans.By analyzing how the people of Guadeloupe used ceramics-whether jugs for transporting and purifying water, pots for cooking, or pearlware for eating-Arcangeli spotlights the larger social history of Creole life. What emerges is a detail rich picture of water consumption habits, changing foodways, and concepts of health. Sherds of History offers a compelling and novel study of the material record and the "e;ceramic culture"e; it represents to broaden our understanding of race, class, and gender in French-colonial societies in the Caribbean and the United States.Arcangeli's innovative interpretation of the material record will challenge the ways archaeologists analyze ceramics.

Society for American Archaeology Scholarly Book AwardHighlighting the strong relationship between New England's Nipmuc people and their land from the pre-contact period to the present day, this book helps demonstrate that the history of Native Americans did not end with the arrival of Europeans. This is the rich result of a twenty-year collaboration between indigenous and nonindigenous authors, who use their own example to argue that Native peoples need to be integral to any research project focused on indigenous history and culture.The stories traced in this book center around three Nipmuc archaeological sites in Massachusetts-the seventeenth century town of Magunkaquog, the Sarah Boston Farmstead in Hassanamesit Woods, and the Cisco Homestead on the Hassanamisco Reservation. The authors bring together indigenous oral histories, historical documents, and archaeological evidence to show how the Nipmuc people outlasted armed conflict and Christianization efforts instigated by European colonists. Exploring key issues of continuity, authenticity, and identity, Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration provides a model for research projects that seek to incorporate indigenous knowledge and scholarship.

"A unique social and economic history of the Seminoles and an insightful view of their cultural adaptation and cultural continuity that previously has not been appreciated or understood."--Florida Heritage

In Show Thyself a Man, Gregory Mixon explores the ways African Americans in postbellum Georgia used the militia as a vehicle to secure full citizenship, respect, and a more stable place in society. As citizen-soldiers, black men were empowered to get involved in politics, secure their own financial independence, and publicly commemorate black freedom with celebrations such as Emancipation Day.White Georgians, however, used the militia as a different symbol of freedom--to ensure the postwar white right to rule. This book is a forty-year history of black militia service in Georgia and the determined disbandment process that whites undertook to destroy it, connecting this chapter of the post-emancipation South to the larger history of militia participation by African-descendant people through the Western hemisphere and Latin America.

This book tells the story of how NASA transformed Florida's East Coast from an economy based on agriculture and tourism to one of the nation's most influential centers of technology.

In this book, Canter Brown, Jr. records the economic, social, political, and racial history of the Peace River Valley in southwestFlorida in an account of violence, passion, struggle, sacrifice, anddetermination.