{"id":23997,"date":"2012-06-27T03:20:31","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T03:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=23997"},"modified":"2012-09-22T14:46:03","modified_gmt":"2012-09-22T14:46:03","slug":"imperfect-unions-staging-miscegenation-in-u-s-drama-and-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=23997","title":{"rendered":"Imperfect Unions: Staging Miscegenation in U.S. Drama and Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imperfect Unions: Staging Miscegenation in U.S. Drama and Fiction<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

University of Minnesota Press<\/a>
\nJuly 2012
\n336 pages
\n9 b&w photos
\n5 1\/2 x 8 1\/2
\npaper ISBN: 978-0-8166-7099-4
\ncloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-7098-7<\/p>\n

Diana Rebekkah Paulin<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of English and American Studies
\nTrinity College, Hartford, Connecticut<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Imperfect Unions<\/em> examines the vital role that nineteenth- and twentieth-century dramatic and literary enactments played in the constitution and consolidation of race in the United States. Diana Rebekkah Paulin investigates how these representations produced, and were produced by, the black\u2013white binary that informed them in a wide variety of texts written across the period between the Civil War<\/a> and World War I<\/a>\u2014by Louisa May Alcott<\/a>, Thomas Dixon<\/a>, J. Rosamond Johnson<\/a>, Charles Chesnutt<\/a>, James Weldon Johnson<\/a>, William Dean Howells<\/a>, and many others.<\/p>\n

Paulin\u2019s \u201cmiscegenated reading practices\u201d reframe the critical cultural roles that drama and fiction played during this significant half century. She demonstrates the challenges of crossing intellectual boundaries, echoing the crossings\u2014of race, gender, nation, class, and hemisphere\u2014that complicated the black\u2013white divide at the turn of the twentieth century and continue to do so today.
\n\u00a0
\nImperfect Unions<\/em> reveals how our ongoing discussions about race are also dialogues about nation formation. As the United States attempted to legitimize its own global ascendancy, the goal of eliminating evidence of inferiority became paramount. At the same time, however, the foundation of the United States was linked to slavery that served as reminders of its \u201cmongrel\u201d origins.<\/p>\n

Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n