Category: Passing

  • The Author Speaks: Interview With Daniel J. Sharfstein AARP Bulletin American Association of Retired Persons 2011-02-17 Julia M. Klein His powerful new book examines how three American families became white Before Daniel J. Sharfstein’s senior year at Harvard, he spent the summer of 1993 in South Africa as a volunteer for a voter education project.…

  • The Invisible Line Between Black and White Smithsonian.com 2011-02-18 T. A. Frail Vanderbilt professor Daniel Sharfstein discusses the history of the imprecise definition of race in America For much of their history, Americans dealt with racial differences by drawing a strict line between white people and black people. But Daniel J. Sharfstein, an associate professor…

  • Shades of White The New York Times 2011-02-25 Raymond Arsenault, Visiting Scholar, Florida State University Study Center in London and John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History, University of South Florida Daniel J. Sharfstein. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. 415 pp.…

  • Tracing lives of three ‘white’ families and their black forebears The Boston Globe 2011-02-20 Dan Cryer, Globe Correspondent Daniel J. Sharfstein. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. 415 pp. Hardcover ISBN: 9781594202827. Randall Lee Gibson, an urbane, Yale-educated Confederate general, mocked black…

  • A conversation with Daniel J. Sharfstein (Author of  The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White) The Penguin Press January 2011 Lauren Hodapp, Senior Publicist The Penguin Press Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law Vanderbilt University Daniel J. Sharfstein. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey…

  • Miscegenation and competing definitions of race in twentieth-century Louisiana Journal of Southern History Volume 71, Number 3 (August, 2005) pages 621-659 Michelle Brattain, Associate Professor of History Georgia State University MARCUS BRUCE CHRISTIAN, AN AUTHOR AND PROFESSOR AT DILLARD University, observed in the mid-nineteen-fifties that while New Orleans might be known for “gumbo, jambalaya, lagniappe,…

  • Passing, Cultural Performance, and Individual Agency: Performative Reflections on Black Masculine Identity Cultural Studies↔Critical Methodologies Volume 4, Number 3 pages 377-404 DOI: 10.1177/1532708603259680 Bryant Keith Alexander, Acting Dean and Professor of Communication Studies California State University, Los Angeles This performative article uses the trope of “passing” as reference to crossing racial identity borders as well…

  • Brass Ankles Speak Essays by Alice Dunbar-Nelson circa 1929 Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935) Prefatory Note by Gloria T. Hull Entitled “Brass Ankles Speaks” (Vol. 2, WADN), it is an outspoken denunciation of darker skinned black people’s prejudice against light-skinned blacks told by a “brass ankles,” a black person “white enough to pass for white, but with…

  • Surveying the Intersection: Pathology, Secrecy, and the Discourses of Racial and Sexual Identity Journal of Homosexuality Volume 26, Issue 2 & 3 (December 1993) pages 1-20 DOI: 10.1300/J082v26n02_01 Marylynne Diggs “Surveying the Intersection: Pathology, Secrecy, and the Discourses of Racial and Sexual Identity” cautions against the risks of metaphorical imperialism in readings of codified gay…

  • In exploring the social and cultural history of this distinctly American phenomenon, Bennett moves freely between literature, film, and music, arguing that the passing figure is crucial to our understanding of past and present conceptions of race.