Month: February 2022

An Interview with Dr. Sara Damiano on her new book, ‘To Her Credit: Women, Finance, and the Law in Eighteenth-Century New England’

We took a minute to catch up with Dr. Sara Damiano on her new book, To Her Credit: Women, Finance, and the Law in Eighteenth-Century New England (Johns Hopkins University Press). Dr. Damiano’s book “uncovers free women’s centrality to the interrelated worlds of eighteenth-century finance and law. Focusing on everyday life in Boston, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island—two of the busiest port cities of this period—Damiano argues that colonial women’s skilled labor actively facilitated the growth of Atlantic ports and their legal systems. Mining vast troves of court records, Damiano reveals that married and unmarried women of all social classes forged new paths through the complexities of credit and debt, stabilizing credit networks amid demographic and economic turmoil. In turn, urban women mobilized sophisticated skills and strategies as borrowers, lenders, litigants, and witnesses.”

 

Congratulations! How does it feel to have your first book published?

Dr. Damiano: It feels great! I began using court records to study eighteenth-century women when I was an undergraduate, and continued that work for my PhD dissertation—so this book is the culmination of a very long process. I’m excited that my research can now more readily shape scholarly conversations about women’s relationship to economic and legal development in early British North America.

What is the general argument of your book and how do you see is speaking to other works in your field?

Dr. Damiano: To Her Credit argues that free white women’s financial and legal work was essential to economic and legal development in eighteenth-century New England. I focus on the region’s two largest port cities, Boston, MA and Newport, RI. In these place, men’s work often took them to sea, sometimes never to return, and women outnumbered men. Everyday practices therefore demanded that women become skilled users of credit and debt.

My work sits at the intersection of several subfields, including women’s and gender history, legal history, and the history of capitalism. By reconstructing everyday practices, we can more fully recognize women’s contributions eighteenth century financial networks and legal institutions. We can also see that specific roles—such as creditor, debtor, or witness—endowed women with situational forms of authority or vulnerability that broad frameworks like patriarchy and marriage law can obscure.

Can you tell our readers a bit about your research process, and the trajectory of the project more generally?

Dr. Damiano: While my research uses many different kinds of manuscript and printed sources, I relied most heavily on county court records. In the absence of modern financial institutions like banks and collection agencies, the courts were a very important arena in which New Englanders enforced financial obligations. Of the hundreds of cases heard at each court term, more than 80 percent concerned debts. In other words, unlike today, going to court was a commonplace, routine activity. I used court records in three ways. First, I examined records from thousands of cases in order to quantify and compare women’s and men’s activities. Second, I reconstructed stories of individual women who waged extended legal battles. Third, I aggregated small details from routine cases in order to create a composite picture of women’s everyday practices. I wrote more about this third method in a recent blog post for JHU Press.

Is there a particular vignette that sticks out to you that you’d like to share from your book?

Dr. Damiano: As New England’s legal system developed during the eighteenth century, courts and laws increasingly favored creditors over debtors. As I explain in my book, this benefitted many women. White urban women were important lenders within their communities. Two-thirds of female litigants in debt suits were plaintiffs and creditors, and they overwhelmingly won their cases.

But, this same system disadvantaged female debtors, especially those who made legal errors or were saddled with extensive debt. One of these woman was Ann Maylem, the Newport, Rhode Island widow of an insolvent rum distiller. She spent six years battling her late husband’s former business partners, and took her cases to Rhode Island’s highest courts. In the course of her efforts, she also took the rare step of publishing a broadside (an eighteenth-century poster) outlining her side of the case. Her story contains elements of both persistence and tragedy. Read Chapter 5 of my book to learn more!

Where do you hope future projects will take you?

Dr. Damiano: I remain fascinated by eighteenth-century court records and the ways in which they provide windows onto the lives of marginalized individuals, especially women. In the course of researching To Her Credit, I’ve become interested with urban residents’ interactions with minor law enforcement officials—figures including sheriffs, constables, jailkeepers, and watchmen. For my next project, I’m planning on investigating the power dynamics at play during such interactions, and the skills that free and enslaved men and women used to protect their persons and property.

Categories: Undergraduate Students

International Film Festival and Symposium on Consent

 

Screenings: 4-14 April 2022

Symposium: Friday, 15 April 2022  9-5 in Centennial Hall G02

 

Sponsors: University Lecturers Committee, Honors College, College of Liberal Arts, Departments of World Languages and Literatures, Anthropology, Geography, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Centers for Diversity and Gender Studies, International Studies, and the Center for the Study of the Southwest. 

Albertine Cinémathèque is a program of FACE Foundation and Villa Albertine in partnership with the French Embassy in the United States and with the support of the CNC (Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée) and the Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain. 

Week 1 

“Age of Consent & Abuse” / 3 films / Monday April 4 / 6-8 pm 

1) Online: Little Boy, by Roland Klick, 1968, German 

When the parents of a suburban, middle-class family go to a party, they leave Achim and his baby sister under the supervision of Monika, the neighbor’s daughter. Soon after the parents are gone, Monika ditches babysitting to go out with her boyfriend, and Achim murders the baby by means of suffocation. Roland Klick’s debut feature is a film that uses cinema as a means to comment on German society. Much of the film is spent in the aftermath of the crime with the parents and neighbors trying to figure out who is responsible with both Monika and Achim denying any involvement or taking any responsibility for their actions. 

Suggested and run by Dr. Lisa Haegele, Assistant Professor of German, with short intro/pre-symposium survey/after-film Q&A 

2) On Campus (Centennial Hall G02): Slalom, by Charlène Favier, 2020, French 

This Cannes-selected #MeToo drama from debut filmmaker Charlène Favier follows the relationship between a teenage ski prodigy and her predatory instructor, played by Dardenne brothers’ collaborator Jérémie Renier. In a breakthrough role, Noée Abita plays 15-year-old Lyz, a high school student in the French Alps who has been accepted to an elite ski club known for producing some of the country’s top professional athletes. 

Run by Dr. Jennifer Forrest, Professor of French, with short intro/pre-symposium survey/after-film Q&A 

3) In Community(Stellar Coffee co.): Little Girl, by Sébastien Lifshitz, 2020, French 

Petite Fille is the portrait of 7-year-old Sasha, who has always known that she is a girl. Sasha’s family has recently accepted her gender identity, embracing their daughter for who she truly is while working to confront outdated norms and find affirmation in a small community of rural France. 

Run by Dr. Carole Martin, Professor of French, with short intro/pre-symposium survey/after-film Q&A

“Tales of Consent &Dissent” / 3 films/Wednesday April 6/ 6-8 pm

1) Online:Hyenas, by Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1992, Senegalese 

Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty sets an intriguing tale that speaks to the African continent’s complex place in the global order: his protagonist comes back to her hometown with a proposal to give its citizens an extraordinary amount of money, if they accept to kill their future mayor, who, she reveals, impregnated and abandoned her when she was a teenager. The vexed citizens initially reject her offer, but as the town’s debt accumulates in the face of a flood of consumer goods, the abuser begins to fear for his life. 

Run by Babacar Tall, with short intro/pre-symposium survey/after-film Q&A

2) On Campus (Centennial Hall G02): Nights of Cabiria, by Federico Fellini, 1957, Italian 

Cabiria works as a prostitute, becoming entangled in a series of relationships that eschew “consent”, before falling in love and accepting to get married to Oscar, yet another embezzler who intends to kill her and steal her money.   Like other neo-realistic films, Le Notti di Cabiria is aimed toward the development of a theme. Its interest is not so much the conflicts that occur in the life of the heroine as the deep, underlying implications that the pattern of her life shows. 

Suggestedand run by Dr. Jessica Pliley, Associate Professor of the History of Women, Genders, and Sexualities, with short intro/pre-symposium survey/after-film Q&A

3) In Community (San Marcos Public Library): Sisters of the Gion, by Kenji Mizoguchi, 1936, Japanese Two geisha sisters lead a hard life in Kyoto’s Gion district. When one of them feels obliged to help a ruined businessman, the other sister cooks up various schemes to get rid of him. Whereas one sister embodies a very traditional discretion in expressing her emotions, the other flouts codes and morals. 

Suggested and run by Dr. Maria-Luisa Gomez Ramirez, Senior Lecturer of French, with short intro/pre-symposium survey/after-film Q&A

Thursday Nuit Blanche / April 7 

From “Tales of Consent & Dissent” to “Consent in Post-Modern/Post-Colonial Societies” 

7 films (3 double features + 1 community screening) 

1) Online Double Feature 1 (French): 

a) Beauty and the Beast, by Jean Cocteau, 1946 

A defining influence on filmmakers as different as Ingmar Bergman and François Truffaut, this adaptation of the classic fairy tale by iconoclastic novelist, playwright, artist, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau is a deeply ambiguous work about the foundational role of consent. 

b) Portrait of a Lady on Fire, by Céline Sciamma, 2019 

In the late eighteenth-century, Marianne, a female painter, travels to an island off the coast of Brittany to paint a portrait of Héloïse, a young woman whose mother has recently taken her out of a convent to marry her to an Italian nobleman whom she has never met. But Héloïse refuses to sit for a portrait she knows will be offered to her prospective husband. 

Run by Scarlett Cado, with surveys but no discussion/6-10 pm 

2) Online Double Feature 2 (German and South-Korean): 

a) The Edukators, by Hans Weingartner, 2004 

Young, anti-capitalist Berlin activists involved in a love triangle, invade upper-class houses, rearrange the furniture, and leave notes identifying themselves. Weingartner, a former activist, wrote the film based on his experiences and chose to use nonviolent characters. His work has now become a cult production of the “German New Wave”, and it has inspired real-life actions. 

b) Parasite, by Bong Joon-ho, 2019 

The film portrays the history of a family of two parents and two teenagers that lives in extreme poverty. They are trying to find a way to better their lives, while ending up lying and deceiving rich people. The issue it raises is: how far can human beings take their scams to become better versions of themselves, and how come they lived in such poverty? 

Run by Dr. Malgorzata Citko-DuPlantis, Lecturer of Japanese, with surveys but no discussion/6-10 pm 

3) On Campus Double Feature in Centennial Hall G02 (American and Mauritanian): 

a) The Story of a Three-Day Pass, by Melvin Van Peebles, 1967 

Channeling the exuberance of the French New Wave, Van Peebles creates an exploration of the psychology of an interracial relationship as well as a commentary on France’s contradictory attitudes about race that laid the foundation for the blaxploitation cinematic revolution he would unleash just a few years later with Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. 

b) Soleil Ô, by Med Hondo, 1970 The late Mauritanian-French writer-director-producer Med Hondo was a trailblazer in making independent films that featured the lives of African immigrants in Europe and denounced all forms of oppression. His first feature Soleil Ô, self-financed and shot over three years in the aftermath of May 68, follows the fortunes of an African immigrant in Paris whose initial excitement about the capital of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” turns into a withering verdict on the effects of colonial history. Run by Carole Martin, with surveys but no discussion/6-10 pm 

4) In Community(Stellar Coffee co.): Caramel, by Nadine Labaki, 2007, Lebanese

Labaki, a Lebanese writer, director, and actress depicts the life of five Lebanese women who work in a beauty salon in Beirut, Lebanon. They struggle between their desire to live free and their obligation to tradition, religion, and family rules. The contradictions and the issues they have to deal with in their life are woven in an intriguing manner that illustrates both compliance and resistance to societal norms. 

Suggested and run by Noha Mohama-Akkari, Instructor of Arabic, with short intro/pre-symposium survey/after-film Q&A/6-8 pm 

Week 2 

“Consent & Family Affairs” / 3 films / Monday April 11 / 6-8 pm 

1) Online: 35 Shots of Rum, by Claire Denis, 2009, French 

35 Rhums portrays a family of two’s extreme closeness (between a widowed father, Lionel, and his university-student daughter, Joséphine) while suggesting its potential for suffocation. 

Run by Dr. Moira DiMauro-Jackson, Senior Lecturer of French and Instructor of Italian, with short intro/pre-symposium survey/after-film Q&A 

2) On Campus (Centennial Hall G02): Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom, by Pedro Almodóvar, 1980, Spanish 

Pepi is raped by the policeman who catches her growing marijuana in her apartment. She seeks revenge by getting his masochist wife to leave him. 

Suggested and run by Dr. Louie Valencia, Assistant Professor of History, with short intro/pre-symposium survey/after-film Q&A 

3) In Community(Stellar Coffee co.): By the Grace of God, by François Ozon, 2019, French 

This dramatization of the events that exposed the most significant sex abuse scandal to date in the French Catholic church focuses on what happens to victims once they speak their truth. It is an important contribution to awareness of the global problem of sexual abuse in the Church and the general conversation in the era of #MeToo. 

Run by Dr. Miranda Sachs, Assistant Professor of History, with short intro/pre-symposium survey/after-film Q&A 

“Consent in Post-Modern/Post-Colonial Societies” / 3 films / Wednesday April 13 / 6-8 pm 

1) Online: Pan’s Labyrinth, by Guillermo del Toro, 2006, Mexican 

This is a film that deals with the Spanish Civil War, Francoist period, and the struggle against an overpowering state, in which identity and self-determination are challenged. Yet El laberinto del fauno’s imaginary world presents a radical and rewarding model to examine consent under totalitarian regimes. 

Run by Carole Martin, with short intro/pre-symposium survey/short after-film Q&A 

2) On Campus (Centennial Hall G02): The Society of the Spectacle, by Guy Debord, 1974, French 

Six years after the publication of his Situationist classic La Société du Spectacle, Guy Debord released this essay-film adaptation, using the technique of “détournement” (think pre-digital remixing). He overlays a dizzying array of still and film images with text from the book to provide a sharp commentary on a world dominated by image and power. 

Run by Dr. Ron Haas, Honors College Director of Research and Writing, with short intro/pre-symposium survey/ after-film Q&A 

3) In Community(San Marcos Public Library): Night of the Kings, by Philippe Lacôte, 2020, Ivorian 

A young man is sent to “La Maca,” a prison in the middle of the Ivorian forest ruled by its inmates. As tradition goes, with the rising of the red moon, he is designated by the Boss to be the new “Roman”—or “Scheherazade”—and must tell a story for his life to be spared. He begins to narrate the life of the legendary outlaw named “Zama King” to the other prisoners. 

Run by Kenny Anagbogu, with short intro/pre-symposium survey/short after-film Q&A 

Thursday Nuit Blanche / April 14 / 6-8 pm 

2 pre-symposium screenings 

Online Double Feature: 

a) Becky’s Journey, by Sine Plambech, 2015 

Becky’s Journey provides rare insight into the hopes and fears of high-risk migration and human trafficking from a woman’s perspective. It documents Becky’s attempts to travel across the Mediterranean and tells the story of the many migrants that never reach Europe’s shores. 

b) The Rape of Recy Taylor, by Nancy Buirski, 2017 

Mrs. Recy Taylor was gang raped by six white boys in 1944 Alabama. Unbroken, she spoke up and fought for justice with help from Rosa Parks and legions of women. 

Run by Maria-Luisa Gomez Ramirez, with surveys but no discussion 

Friday Symposium / April 15 / Centennial Hall G02 

AM/9:30-10:50—Opening guest lectures with short intro and Q&A moderated by Dr. Jessica Pliley 

Dr. Sine Plambech, Danish Institute for International Studies, on filming Becky’s Journey 

Ms. Piper Nelson, The SAFE Alliance, Austin, Texas, “Stopping the Cycle of Violence in Central Texas” 

11 AM-1:50 PM–Students meet in survey-generated discussion groups (4 running concurrently from 11-12:20 and 4 from 12-30-1:50) with 8 moderators (Kenny Anagbogu, Moira DiMauro-Jackson, Maria-Luisa Gomez Ramirez, Lisa Haegele, Mona Mansard, Carole Martin, Noha Mohama-Akkari, and Babacar Tall) 

PM/2-3:20—Afternoon guest lectures with short intro and Q&A moderated by Dr. Louie Valencia 

Dr. Ourida Mostefai, Brown University, on consent in Beauty and the Beast 

Dr. Danielle McGuire, “Recy Taylor and the Roots of the Civil Rights Movement” 

PM/3:30-5–Roundtable with guests, moderated by Dr. Carole Martin, and Q&A with organizers, Drs. DiMauro-Jackson, Forrest, Gomez Ramirez, Haas, Haegele, Sachs, and Ms. Mohama-Akkari, Texas State students, and public. 

Categories: Center for the Study of the Southwest, Events, Faculty, History at Texas State, People, Undergraduate Students

An Interview with Dr. Anadelia Romo on her new book, ‘Selling Black Brazil: Race, Nation, and Visual Culture in Salvador, Bahia’

Dr. Ana Romo holding book

We took a minute to catch up with Dr. Anadelia Romo on her new book, Selling Black Brazil: Race, Nation, and Visual Culture in Salvador, Bahia (University of Texas Press). Dr. Romo’s book shows how “Brazil shifted from a nation intent on whitening its population to one billing itself as a racial democracy.” Selling Black Brazil shows “that this shift centered in Salvador, Bahia, where throughout the 1950s, modernist artists and intellectuals forged critical alliances with Afro-Brazilian religious communities of Candomblé to promote their culture and their city.” In the book, Dr. Romo “reveals, concealed deep racial inequalities. Illustrating how these visual archetypes laid the foundation for Salvador’s modern racial landscape, this book unveils the ways ethnic and racial populations have been both included and excluded not only in Brazil but in Latin America as a whole.”

 

Congratulations! How does it feel to have your book published?

Dr. Romo: Thanks, I’m so relieved to have the book out in the real world and out of my head! This is my second book, and it was definitely more fun to write than the first. The second book felt different because I ended up working with art and visual culture, something that was new and exciting to me. And I also made a real effort with this recent work to write in a way that would be readable. I’ve gotten frustrated with history scholarship recently and wanted to make this book more accessible to students and a wider public. Trying to make the writing vivid and clear was its own challenge, but I’m really happy with the results and I hope that all that care comes through to readers.

What is the general argument of your book and how do you see is speaking to other works in your field?

Dr. Romo: My book has a few larger arguments and some smaller more specific arguments. My larger point is that Blackness has occupied an uncomfortable position in the visual culture of Latin America, and we can learn a lot by exploring that. One of the things we can look at is how Blackness gets treated in visual representations of the nation. These representations reveal how Blackness has been largely written out of the nation in the Americas (and I include the U.S. here) despite the important contributions and presence of so many from the African diaspora. My book looks at one of the most important centers of the diaspora, the city of Salvador, Bahia, and probes how and why Blackness came to be visually central for representations of the region, and for Brazil overall. Part of my larger point with this project is asking what is gained and lost in these symbolic representations. I argue that while depictions of Blackness came to be central for Bahia, these representations were often limited and stereotyped, and that visual inclusions did not, unfortunately, map onto larger political inclusions.

Can you tell our readers a bit about your research process, and the trajectory of the project more generally?

Dr. Romo: My research process for this book was unusual because I got to use a source base that many historians had ignored before—tourist guides. My first book had looked at changing ideas of race in Bahia and stopped in the decade of the 1950s. In the process I had noticed a strange number of tourist guides written by really big cultural figures in Salvador. So I became interested in why this happened, and why it began to really peak in the 1950s. And I also thought that these tourist guides, written by those within Bahia, proved a pretty ideal barometer for measuring racial attitudes in the city. Once I started to look more closely at them, I discovered that most of them were illustrated, again by some very high-profile artists and figures. Although I had not started the project with a focus on visual culture, as I read the guides it rapidly became clear that the illustrations of these guides were just as important, if not more, than the written texts themselves. And that caused me to really reassess the project. In the end I think the focus on this visual culture is really is one of its greatest strengths.

What were some of the major challenges you encountered while doing your research?

Dr. Romo: Some of the challenges I faced in this project were tracking down the tourist guides and also trying to get permissions to include such great art in the book. I have about ninety images in the book, and each image presented its own puzzle in order for me to find a high-quality reproduction and to get permissions to reproduce. Art historians are used to this, but I was not, and it was its own separate project! Trying to track down some of the tourist guides was also sometimes tough. Because these guides were considered to be outdated quickly, and because they were not typical historical documents, some of them were not widely preserved. Anyone who works on modern Bahia knows the difficulty of tracking things down in the many archives there. I had a lot of help from archivists and colleagues, but it was sometimes an adventure.

Where do you hope future projects will take you?

Dr. Romo: My future project for the long term involves a study of anthropology in Brazil, and especially the rise of the community study, a form of research originally pioneered by Robert Redfield in Mexico. I’m interested in how these ideas moved across the Americas and why Brazil proved so pivotal for anthropology in the Americas as a whole. I’d started this project already when I got “sidetracked” by the tourist guides, so I’m looking forward to getting back to it.

Categories: Faculty, History at Texas State, News, People, Publications, Research