In nineteenth-century plantation literature, the runaway slave in the swamp was a recurrent "bogeyman" whose presence challenged myths of the plantation system. By escaping to the swamps, the runaway, or "maroon," gained an invisibility that was more threatening to the institution than open conflict. The chattel system was dependent upon an exercise of will upon the body of the enslaved, but slaves who asserted control over their bodies, by removing them to the swamps, claimed definition over the Self. In part, the proslavery plantation novel served to transform that image of the maroon from its untouchable, abstract state to a form that could be possessed, understood, and controlled. In other words, writers defending slavery would often conjure forth the rebellious image in order to dispel it safely.;This project contextualizes some of the major works in the plantation genre by revealing the dialectical processes involved in their creation. For example, one section gives special attention to the cultural milieu of the 1850s surrounding Harriet Beecher Stowe's second anti-slavery novels, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. Other primary works include Thomas Nelson Page's "No Haid Pawn" and John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn, arguably the first novel of the plantation genre. Contexts for these works are comprised of other "literary" works such as plantation romances and slave narratives. But the project also seeks to understand the signifying power of the maroon through the testimonies of former slaves, newspaper representations of African Americans, plantation rituals and daily interactions between black and white, and folklore of former slaves as it was collected (and conceived) by postbellum whites.;Despite the common occurrence of pillory scenes at the conclusion of maroon tales, this project shows that the final signifying power of the maroon was not of the law writ large upon his body; rather, the maroon survived as legend, as an invisible presence just beyond white control.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-04, Section: A, page: 1490. Adviser: James D. Le Sueur. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed March 22, 2007)."

<p> Governments have long used language policy as a means of social control. As Frantz Fanon and Ng&utilde;g&itilde; wa Thiong&rsquo;o have argued, language played a key role in supporting colonial rule across Africa and remains part of the colonial legacy. From the late 1920s through World War II, the British colonial governments of Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, and Zanzibar promoted the Kiswahili language as a regional <i>lingua franca</i>, a policy facilitated by the Inter-Territorial Language Committee for the East African Dependencies (ILC). I use published sources, archival records, and qualitative textual analysis of the ILC&rsquo;s published journal to trace the Committee&rsquo;s development from 1930 to 1970. Building on Ireri Mbaabu&rsquo;s work, I argue that the British initially chose to promote and standardize Kiswahili as a way to make their subject societies more legible or, in other words, more efficiently governable but reversed course in the 1940s after realizing Kiswahili&rsquo;s potential as a tool for anti-colonial organizing. The Committee adapted to the British language policy reversal by encouraging East African participation and switching its focus from social control to research. The Tanganyikan nationalists&rsquo; commitment to Kiswahili as a building block for a detribalized national identity allowed the Committee to survive the transition to independence and, as a research institute, continue to contribute to the study and promotion of Kiswahili in postcolonial Tanzania and beyond. My case study of the ILC&rsquo;s transformation affirms the importance of language control for the colonial project and the value of African languages in addressing the ongoing colonial legacy of cultural destruction.</p>

<p> The Catholic Diocese of South Carolina engaged in an extensive preparation program to ready the Catholic community for desegregation several years before the process occurred in 1963. After the <i>Brown v. Board of Education </i> decision, the diocese took steps to work for racial justice even though Catholics made up a small minority of the state&rsquo;s population. In 1961, Bishop Paul J. Hallinan issued a Pastoral Letter that outlined the preparation process towards desegregation. The diocesan actions included integrating the first elementary school in South Carolina, challenging local politicians who were hostile to racial equality, and the development of a <i>Syllabus on Racial Justice.</i> While it took the diocese nine years to desegregate, the planning process allowed for an orderly transition. This work places the South Carolina Catholic desegregation story within the context of the struggle for and resistance to what C. Vann Woodward referred to as the Second Reconstruction.</p>