"Miscegenation"
Subtitle: making race in America
By: Elise Lemire.
Series: [New cultural studies]
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 204
Subjects: Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826 -- In literature.; American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Miscegenation in literature.; Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; Racially mixed people in literature.; Race relations in literature.; Racism in literature.; Race in literature.
Description: "In the years between the Revolution and the Civil War, as the question of black political rights was debated more and more vociferously, descriptions and pictorial representations of whites coupling with blacks proliferated in the North. Novelists, short-story writers, poets, journalists, and political cartoonists imagined that political equality would be followed by widespread inter-racial sex and marriage.

Legally possible yet socially unthinkable, this "amalgamation" of the races would manifest itself in the perverse union of whites with blacks, the latter figured as ugly, animal-like, and foul-smelling. In "Miscegenation," Elise Lemire reads these literary and visual depictions for what they can tell us about the connection between the racialization of desire and the social construction of race."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [179]-189) and index.
Series statement on jacket.