As a place where Black and Green were in perpetual contact, the Atlantic South furnishes an ideal case study in how these peoples moved with, against, and around one another." This article appears in the Spring 2012 issue of Southern Cultures. The full issue is also available as an ebook. Southern Cultures is published quarterly (spring, summer, fall, winter) by the University of North Carolina Press. The journal is sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for the Study of the American South.

'...from time to time a study comes along that truly can be called ‘path breaking,’ ‘seminal,’ ‘essential,’ a ‘must read.’ How the Irish Became White is such a study.' John Bracey, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachussetts, Amherst The Irish came to America in the eighteenth century, fleeing a homeland under foreign occupation and a caste system that regarded them as the lowest form of humanity. In the new country – a land of opportunity – they found a very different form of social hierarchy, one that was based on the color of a person’s skin. Noel Ignatiev’s 1995 book – the first published work of one of America’s leading and most controversial historians – tells the story of how the oppressed became the oppressors; how the new Irish immigrants achieved acceptance among an initially hostile population only by proving that they could be more brutal in their oppression of African Americans than the nativists. This is the story of How the Irish Became White.

Notions of diaspora are central to contemporary debates about 'race', ethnicity, identity and nationalism. Yet the Irish diaspora, one of the oldest and largest, is often excluded on the grounds of 'whiteness'. Outsiders Inside explores the themes of displacement and the meanings of home for these women and their descendants. Juxtaposing the visibility of Irish women in the United States with their marginalization in Britain, Bronwen Walter challenges linear notions of migration and assimilation by demonstrating that two forms of identification can be held simultaneously. In an age when the Northern Ireland peace process is rapidly changing global perceptions of Irishness, Outsiders Inside moves the empirical study of the Irish diaspora out of the 'ghetto' of Irish Studies and into the mainstream, challenging theorists and policy-makers to pay attention to the issue of white diversity.

This book shows how the social constructions of time, space, race, gender and class intersect with each other to produce particular social phenomena that are enduring and significant for our society. Leading the reader through examples drawn from around the world, the author shows how these categories are social constructions; historically formed, ideologically loaded, and subject to change.

Much of the current reassessment of race, culture, and criminal justice in the nineteenth-century South has been based on intensive community studies. Drawing on previously untapped sources, the nine original papers collected here represent some of the best new work on how racial justice can be shaped by the particulars of time and place. Although each essay is anchored in the local, several important larger themes emerge across the volume--such as the importance of personality and place, the movement of former slaves from the capriciousness of "plantation justice" to the (theoretically) more evenhanded processes of the courts, and the increased presence of government in daily aspects of American life. Local Matters cites a wide range of examples to support these themes. One essay considers the case of a quasi-free slave in Natchez, Mississippi--himself a slaveowner--who was "reined in" by his master through the courts, while another shows how federal aims were subverted during trials held in the aftermath of the 1876 race riots in Ellenton, South Carolina. Other topics covered include the fear of black criminality as a motivation of Klan activity; the career of Thomas Ruffin, slaveowner and North Carolina Supreme Court Justice; blacks and the ballot in Washington County, Texas; the overturned murder conviction of a North Carolina slave who had killed a white man; the formation of a powerful white bloc in Vicksburg, Mississippi; agitation by black and white North Carolina women for greater protections from abusive white male elites; and slaves, crime, and the common law in New Orleans. Together, these studies offer new insights into the nature of law and the fate of due process at different stages of a highly racialized society.

A fresh look at a multifaceted minority culture

Traditional critics of film adaptation generally assumed a) that the written text is better than the film adaptation because the plot is more intricate and the language richer when pictorial images do not intrude; b) that films are better when particularly faithful to the original; c) that authors do not make good script writers and should not sully their imagination by writing film scripts; d) and often that American films lack the complexity of authored texts because they are sourced out of Hollywood. The 'faithfulness' view has by and large disappeared, and intertextuality is now a generally received notion, but the field still lacks studies with a postmodern methodology and lens.Exploring Hollywood feature films as well as small studio productions, Adaptation Theory and Criticism explores the intertextuality of a dozen films through a series of case studies introduced through discussions of postmodern methodology and practice. Providing the reader with informative background on theories of film adaptation as well as carefully articulated postmodern methodology and issues, Gordon Slethaug includes several case studies of major Hollywood productions and small studio films, some of which have been discussed before (Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York, and Do the Right Thing) and some that have received lesser consideration (Six Degrees of Separation, Smoke, Smoke Signals, Broken Flowers, and various Snow White narratives including Enchanted, Mirror Mirror, and Snow White and the Huntsman). Useful for both film and literary studies students, Adaptation Theory and Criticism cogently combines the existing scholarship and uses previous theories to engage readers to think about the current state of American literature and film.