Trauma and Resilience in American Indian and African American Southern History explores the dual process of a refusal to remember, that is, the force of active forgetting, and the multiple ways in which Native Americans and African Americans have kept alive memories of conquest and enslavement. Complex narratives of loss endured during the antebellum period still resonate in the current debate over sovereignty and reparations. Remembrances of events tinged with historical trauma are critical not only to the collective memories of American Indian and African American communities but, as public health research forcefully demonstrates, to their health and well-being on every level. Interdisciplinary dialogue and inquiry are essential to fully articulate how historical and contemporary circumstances have affected the collective memories of groups. Until recently, Southern whites have (nostalgically or dismissively) remembered American Indian and African American historical presence in the region. Their recollections silence the outrages committed and thus prevent the healing of inflicted trauma. Efforts of remembrance are at odds with intergenerational gaps of knowledge about family history and harmful stereotyping.

Elliott J. Gorn explores and evokes the full story of murder that transfixed and transformed the nation.

Introduces an analytic model for how archaeologists can work toward social justice

Terrorism, black poverty, and economic exploitation produced a condition of collective trauma and social suffering for thousands of black Deltans in the Twentieth Century. Based on oral histories with African American activists and community leaders, this work reveals the impact of that oppression.

Terrorism, black poverty, and economic exploitation produced a condition of collective trauma and social suffering for thousands of black Deltans in the Twentieth Century. Based on oral histories with African American activists and community leaders, this work reveals the impact of that oppression.

In this book, Ron Eyerman explores the formation of the African-American identity through the theory of cultural trauma. The trauma in question is slavery, not as an institution or as personal experience, but as collective memory: a pervasive remembrance that grounded a people's sense of itself. Combining a broad narrative sweep with more detailed studies of important events and individuals, Eyerman reaches from Emancipation through the Harlem Renaissance, the Depression, the New Deal and the Second World War to the Civil Rights movement and beyond. He offers insights into the intellectual and generational conflicts of identity-formation which have a truly universal significance, as well as providing a compelling account of the birth of African-American identity. Anyone interested in questions of assimilation, multiculturalism and postcolonialism will find this book indispensable.

In 21st century America, personhood is under daily assault, sometimes with dire consequences. Scientist, ethicist, and ordained minister Craig C. Malbon encourages the reader to consider such assaults on personhood endured by victims of abortion, ageism, Alzheimer’s disease, drug addiction, mental and physical disabilities, gender, gender orientation, racism, sexual preference, identity politics, and our will-to-power over the “other.” In exploring personhood status, Malbon poses difficult questions for us. Is personhood assigned as all-or-nothing, or is it a sliding scale based upon criteria arbitrarily aimed at our vulnerabilities? Does the voiceless embryo and fetus have advocates who can speak to the moral question of abortion? Is the personhood of an economically insecure pregnant woman degraded to the point where lack of access to early termination of pregnancy results in “coercive childbearing?” Does being a member of the LGBTQI+ community target one for assaults on personhood, to the extreme of being killed? In delving into the biology and psychology of assaults of “self” upon the “other,” Malbon sees powerful linkages of everyday assaults on personhood to darker, profound “original sins” that are foundational to the rise of the American empire, i.e., assaults on the indigenous Native Americans and assaults derivative to the institution of slavery upon Africans, African Americans, and their descendants.