The House Of Liberty

In this striking study of the pre–Civil War literary imagination, Karen Sánchez-Eppler charts how bodily difference came to be recognized as a central problem for both political and literary expression. Her readings of sentimental anti-slavery fiction, slave narratives, and the lyric poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson demonstrate how these texts participated in producing a new model of personhood—one in which the racially distinct and physically constrained slave body converged alongside the sexually distinct and domestically circumscribed female body. Moving from the public domain of abolitionist politics to the privacy of lyric poetry, Sánchez-Eppler argues that attention to the physical body blurs the boundaries between public and private. Drawing analogies between black and female bodies, feminist-abolitionists use the public sphere of anti-slavery politics to write about sexual desires and anxieties they cannot voice directly. However, Sánchez-Eppler warns against exaggerating the positive links between literature and politics. She finds that the relationships between feminism and abolitionism reveal patterns of exploitation, appropriation, and displacement of the black body that acknowledge the difficulties in embracing “difference” in the nineteenth century as in the twentieth. Her insightful examination of these issues makes a distinctive mark within American literary and cultural studies. This title is part of UC Press’s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.

A robust defense of the essential interdependence of human rights and religious freedom from antiquity to the present.

The Liberty Trilogy contemplates the fragility of freedom and liberty by taking its readers on a fictional adventure through American history. Political and economic circumstance, patriotism, and faith guide the main characters through their unnatural journey. The first book, Libertys Dawn, occurs during the 1780-1781 years of the revolutionary conflict in North Americas southern colonies. In Libertys Dawn, three friends embark on a winter camping trip in the mountains of South Carolina, to escape the stark realities and absurdities of modern society. They have planned a weekend of camp fires, good eating, and target shooting at an outdoor rifle and pistol range. Abruptly, on the first days hike, an unseen force thrusts them back in time to witness the fall of Charleston to British forces loyal to King George in late spring of the year 1780. How did the friends get here? Why are they here? What should they do now? Nik, Sid, and John must wrestle with these questions and ultimately find their way as history unfolds before them. American history is Niks passion and seeing the Revolutionary war is like watching a living history of the events he has studied most of his life. John is an avid outdoorsman and Sid is a computer professional with previous contacts throughout the US military. The friends soon discover an evil from Americas past is in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Will liberty and freedom expire before it takes root? Will evil triumph?

"By examining how ordinary Virginia citizens grappled with the vexing problem of slavery in a society dedicated to universal liberty, Eva Sheppard Wolf broadens our understanding of such important concepts as freedom, slavery, emancipation, and race in the early years of the American republic. She frames her study around the moment between slavery and liberty - emancipation - shedding new light on the complicated relations between whites and blacks in a slave society." "Wolf argues that during the post-Revolutionary period, white Virginians understood both liberty and slavery to be racial concepts more than political ideas. Through an in-depth analysis of archival records, particularly those dealing with manumission between 1782 and 1806, she reveals how these entrenched beliefs shaped both thought and behavior. In spite of qualms about slavery, white Virginians repeatedly demonstrated their unwillingness to abolish the institution." "The manumission law of 1782 eased restrictions on individual emancipation and made possible the liberation of thousands, but Wolf discovers that far fewer slaves were freed in Virginia than previously thought. Those who were emancipated posed a disturbing social, political, and even moral problem in the minds of whites. Where would ex-slaves fit in a society that could not conceive of black liberty? As Wolf points out, even those few white Virginians who proffered emancipation plans always suggested sending freed slaves to some other place. Nat Turner's rebellion in 1831 led to a public debate over ending slavery, after which discussions of emancipation in the Old Dominion largely disappeared as the eastern slaveholding elite tightened its grip on political power in the state." "This well-informed and carefully crafted book outlines important and heretofore unexamined changes in whites' views of blacks and liberty in the new nation. By linking the Revolutionary and antebellum eras, it shows how white attitudes hardened during the half-century that followed the declaration that "all men are created equal.""--BOOK JACKET.

In the case City of Boerne v. Flores, the Supreme Court struck down the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. Waltman offers the first book-length analysis of the act to show how this case contributes to an intense legal debate still ongoing today: Can and should the Supreme Court be the exclusive interpreter of the Constitution?

In Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries, bestselling author Naomi Wolf illustrates the changes that can take place when ordinary citizens engage in the democratic system the way the founders intended and tells how to use that system, right now, to change your life, your community, and ultimately, the nation. As the practice of democracy becomes a lost art, Americans are increasingly desperate for a restored nation. Many have a general sense that the “system” is in disorder—if not on the road to functional collapse. But though it is easy to identify our political problems, the solutions are not always as clear. In Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries, bestselling author Naomi Wolf illustrates the breathtaking changes that can take place when ordinary citizens engage in the democratic system the way the founders intended and tells how to use that system, right now, to change your life, your community, and ultimately, the nation.