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"New raiments of self" African American clothing in the antebellum South
Author
Title
"New raiments of self" [electronic resource] : African American clothing in the antebellum South / Helen Bradley Foster.
ISBN
9781847888808 (ebook)
Published
Oxford : Berg, 1997.
Physical Description
1 online resource (ix, 359 p.) : ill., facsims.,ports.
Local Notes
Access is available to the Yale community.
Notes
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Description based on print version record.
Access and use
Access restricted by licensing agreement.
Summary
This book examines the clothing worn by African Americans in the southern United States during the thirty years before the American Civil War. Drawing on a wide range of sources, most notably oral narratives recorded in the 1930s, this rich account shows that African Americans demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the role clothing played in demarcating age, sex, status, work, recreation, as well as special secular and sacred events. Testimonies offer proof of African Americans' vast technical skills in producing cloth and clothing, which served both as a fundamental reflection of the peoples' Afrocentric craftsmanship and aesthetic sensibilities, and as a reaction to their particular place in American society. Previous work on clothing in this period has tended to focus on white viewpoints, and as a consequence the dress worn by the enslaved has generally been seen as a static standard imposed by white overlords. This excellent study departs from conventional interpretations to show that the clothing of the enslaved changed over time, served multiple functions and represented customs and attitudes which evolved distinctly from within African American communities. In short, it represents a vital contribution to African American studies, as well as to dress and textile history, and cultural and folklore studies.
Variant and related titles
Berg fashion library.
Other formats
Print version :
Format
Books / Online
Language
English
Added to Catalog
November 04, 2021
Series
Dress, body, culture
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Audience
Specialized.
Contents
Introduction: Warping a Folk History 1 Beginning in Africa1 2 Constructing Cloth and Clothing in the Antebellum South 3 Wearing Antebellum Clothing 4 Having Footwear 5 Embellishing the Head2 6 Crowning the Person 7 Clothing as the Weft of a Folk History Epilogue Appendix I: Glossary of Selected Trade-Cloth Terms Used by Europeans Appendix II: Annotated Glossary of Terms Related to Textile Manufacture and Clothing taken from the Narratives Appendix III: Cloth Dyes Reported in the Narratives
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