Department of History

Slavery in New Jersey offers scholars a rich, untapped source for new scholarship about the meaning of freedom and liberty from the Founding Era to the Civil War. Kean University recently sponsored a panel discussion featuring three scholars and their research into the story of slavery in the Garden State. This opening essay offers a summation of the Kean panel's findings, and offers encouragement to other scholars of slavery in the state.

This is a syllabus for an undergraduate course on the history of imperialism and colonialism. The course introduces students to important concepts and terms, offers a broad historical survey of empires (beginning with ancient Rome), and provides an in-depth study of the themes of racism and health in the context of imperialism.

ABSTRACTThis article explores the politics of race and education in early twentieth-century urban Senegal, focusing on the exclusion of African students from certain schools and on the political controversy that grew out of a 1909 education reform. Based on letters from officials, politicians, and African residents, along with minutes from the General Council, it suggests that changes in urban society and colonial policy encouraged people to view access to schooling in terms of race. This article argues that in debating segregation and education quality, residents contributed to a discourse on race that reflected an increasing racial consciousness in the society at large.

Tous droits réservés © Association pour l'Étude des Littératures africaines (APELA), 2016 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l'

Evolution has driven genetic diversity of life on Earth, but also created highly complex genomes that are difficult to sequence. Current draft genomes can have thousands to hundreds of thousands of contigs rather than chromosomes, containing incorrect assemblies, gaps and errors. With rapid advances in long-read technologies, it is becoming possible to resolve complex genomes, including repetitive, polyploid plant genomes. Despite the technology being available, a challenge persists: the extraction of pure high molecular weight DNA suitable for long-read sequencing. This is particularly true of recalcitrant native Australian trees such as Eucalypts and Acacias. To resolve this, firstly we optimised a density gradient based nuclei extraction to remove cytoplasmic secondary metabolites, phenols and limit reads from high copy count plastid genomes. Secondly, we optimised a gentle high-molecular weight DNA extraction free of columns and high centrifugation, to limit DNA fragmentation. Finally, DNA was purified and size selected by gel electrophoresis. For sequencing, we adopted the portable MinION sequencer from Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Using these approaches, we can approximately obtain over 10 gigabases of sequencing from a single MinION revC flow cell and over 15 gigabases with new revD flow cells, up to 23 gigabases. This includes quality reads over 200 kb in length, average N50 values over 20 kb and some N50 values exceeding 45 kb. Such ultra-long reads assist the assembly of high quality genomes, from telomere to telomere.

This article focuses on interracial families in early twentieth-century Senegal, exploring how relationships between French fathers and their racially mixed children simultaneously challenged and reflected colonial racism. Relying on applications for scholarships and related correspondence, it offers detailed case studies of two such families and a discussion of wider trends. The article argues that despite the duty and love that they felt toward their mixed-race children, French fathers continued to see themselves as colonists and to accept some of the ideas about race and power that this entailed.

The eighteenth-century Georgian mansion holds a special fascination in both Britain and America.  Beginning in the late seventeenth century, small classical houses  developed as a distinct architectural type.  From small country estates to provincial towns and their outskirts, these ‘gentleman’s houses’ proliferated throughout the British Atlantic world.

The Gentleman's House in the British Atlantic World analyses the evolution of these houses and owners to tell a story about incremental social change.  It challenges accounts of the newly wealthy overspending on houses and material goods. Instead, The Gentleman’s House offers a new interpretation of social mobility characterized by measured growth and demonstrates that colonial Americans and provincial Britons made similar house building and furnishing choices.

In this ground-breaking study, thirteen leading scholars explore the idea of a shared British Atlantic world through the lens of architecture, built spaces, and landscapes. By studying the interplay between physical construction and social themes that include identity, gender, taste, politeness, domesticity, politics, and race, the authors interpret space and material culture in a way that particularly emphasizes the people who used and occupied buildings and reflects the complex cultural exchanges between Britain and the New World.

The eighteenth-century home was a site of transformation – of spaces, identities, and practices. Although the eighteenth century in the common imagination is often associated with taking tea on polished mahogany tables, a far wider world of experience remains to be introduced. At Home in the Eighteenth Century brings together factual and fictive texts and spaces to explore aspects of the typical Georgian home that we think we know from Jane Austen novels and extant country houses, while also engaging with uncharacteristic and underappreciated aspects of the home. At the core of the volume is the claim that exploring eighteenth-century domesticity from a range of disciplinary vantage points can yield original and interesting questions, as well as reveal new answers. Contributions from the fields of literature, history, archaeology, art history, heritage studies, and material culture brings the home more sharply into focus. In this way At Home in the Eighteenth Century reveals a more nuanced and fluid concept of the eighteenth-century home and becomes a steppingstone to greater understanding of domestic space for undergraduate level and beyond.