Ethnicity, Ethnic Conflict, Race, and Nationalisms--Abroad and at Home |  |
Internet Exercises
| American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology | | From 1936 to 1938, over 2,300 former slaves from across the American South were interviewed by writers and journalists under the aegis of the federal government's Works Progress Administration (WPA). These former slaves, most born in the last years of the slave regime or during the Civil War, provided first-hand accounts of their experiences on plantations, in cities, and on small farms. A website containing "American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology" is found in this web site.
Select several of the narratives and read them. You can also listen to some of them on sound files. Try to organize your sample in a way that allows you to draw some conclusions (for example, use urban-based narratives or rural community resident narratives in one state or region). While you are absorbing the narratives consider the issues of identity, identity maintenance, boundary maintenance mechanisms, and ethnogenesis. Try to identify in these narratives examples of these forms of cultural identity assertion.
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http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/wpahome.html
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| Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings | | This site contains multiple links for exploration concerning issues related to an episode of "Frontline" on PBS entitled, "Jefferson's Blood: Mixed Race America." This documentary and website explore multiple issues and debates emanating from the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. In the documentary, which can be viewed on this website, descendants of this family debate the question of the race of Eston Hemings, the son of Jefferson and Hemings, and express multiple interpretations of their own identities as well as America's mixed-race past.
Explore the multiple links to this website; understand the "one drop rule;" and explore the questions raised by racial categories in the census. What is the "illogic" behind American census categories? Should race continue to be recorded in the American census?
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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/mixed/
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| Northern Ireland | | Find the essay entitled "Conflict in Northern Ireland: A Background Essay," by John Darby, discusses the origins of this ethnic conflict. Read the article and answer the following questions about this conflict.
- Was the conflict over language? religion? land? sovereignty?
- How long has this conflict occurred?
- How do the topics in Chapter 15 (ethnicity, nation building, plurality, multiculturalism) apply to this conflict?
- What are some of the strategies that have been proposed to end this on-going conflict?
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http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/facets.htm
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2003 McGraw-Hill Higher Education