In 1843, the Louisiana Supreme Court heard the case of a slave named Sally Miller, who claimed to have been born a free white person in Germany. This text explores this legal case and its reflection on broader questions about race, society, and law in the antebellum South.

A fascinating exploration of slavery and its laws and an unforgettable portrait of a young woman in pursuit of freedom. “Reads like a legal thriller” (The Washington Post). It is a spring morning in New Orleans, 1843. In the Spanish Quarter, on a street lined with flophouses and gambling dens, Madame Carl recognizes a face from her past. It is the face of a German girl, Sally Miller, who disappeared twenty-five years earlier. But the young woman is property, the slave of a nearby cabaret owner. She has no memory of a “white” past. Yet her resemblance to her mother is striking, and she bears two telltale birthmarks. In brilliant novelistic detail, award-winning historian John Bailey reconstructs the exotic sights, sounds, and smells of mid-nineteenth-century New Orleans, as well as the incredible twists and turns of Sally Miller’s celebrated and sensational case. Did Miller, as her relatives sought to prove, arrive from Germany under perilous circumstances as an indentured servant or was she, as her master claimed, part African, and a slave for life? The Lost German Slave Girl is a tour de force of investigative history that reads like a suspense novel. “Bailey keeps us guessing until the end in this page-turning true courtroom drama of 19th-century New Orleans . . . [He] brings to life the fierce legal proceedings with vivid strokes.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

The author's personal story of life and death and grief and the lessons that the survivors learned. This inspiring work chronicles Sally Miller's thirty-year journey of grief and recovery.

Historical narrative based in 19th century America, about the battle to free an enslaved German girl. In 1843 New Orleans, Madame Carl recognises the daughter of her closest friend who she last saw 25 years ago. The young woman is the slave of a Frenchman owner of a nearby caberet. Narrative examines slavery laws during the 19th century, describes the court room drama surrounding the case, and offers a portrait of a young woman in pursuit of freedom. Includes endnotes. Author is winner of the NSW Premier's Award for History, and the WA Premier's Literary Award for Non-fiction. He has previously written 'The White Divers of Broome'.

New Orleans has always captured our imagination as an exotic city in its racial ambiguity and pursuit of les bons temps. Despite its image as a place apart, the city played a key role in nineteenth-century America as a site for immigration and pluralism, the quest for equality, and the centrality of self-making. In both the literary imagination and the law, creoles of color navigated life on a shifting color line. As they passed among various racial categories and through different social spaces, they filtered for a national audience the meaning of the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution of 1804, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and de jure segregation. Shirley Thompson offers a moving study of a world defined by racial and cultural double consciousness. In tracing the experiences of creoles of color, she illuminates the role ordinary Americans played in shaping an understanding of identity and belonging.

Contemporary Photography and Theory offers an essential overview of some of the key critical debates in fine art photography today. Building on a foundational understanding of photography, it offers an in-depth discussion of five topic areas: identity, landscape and place, the politics of representation, psychoanalysis and the event. Written in an accessible style, it introduces the critical literature relevant to photography that has emerged over recent decades. Moving beyond seminal works by writers such as Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Susan Sontag, it enables readers to explore an extended canon of theorists including Jacques Lacan, Judith Butler and Giorgio Agamben. The book is illustrated throughout and analyses a range of works by established and emergent artists in order to show how these theoretical concepts are central to understanding contemporary photography. These 15 short essays encourage readers to apply critical thinking to both their own work and that of others. They are the perfect starting point for essays as well being of suitable length for assigned readings, making this the ideal resource for learning about contemporary photography and theory.