Tera Hunter

Last updated
Tera Hunter
Born
Miami, Florida
Alma mater Duke University
Yale University
Occupation(s)Historian, professor
Employer Princeton University
Notable workTo 'Joy My Freedom
TitleProfessor of History and African-American Studies

Tera Hunter is an American scholar of African-American history and gender. She holds the Edwards Professor of American History Endowed Chair at Princeton University. She specializes in the study of gender, race, and labor in the history of the Southern United States.

Contents

Early life

Hunter was born in Miami, Florida. She graduated with Distinction in History from Duke University, then earned an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in history from Yale University. [1]

Career

Hunter taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and then Carnegie Mellon University, before joining the faculty of Princeton in 2007. [1]

Hunter published her first book, To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War, in 1997. [2] To 'Joy My Freedom is an account of the lives of southern African American women, specifically domestic workers in Atlanta, from the end of slavery through the beginnings of the Great Migration. [3] She details the many struggles of African American washerwomen in Atlanta to control where they worked and for how long, how much they were paid, how their children were raised, and particularly the right to control their own bodies. [4] The book was specifically noted for focusing on working-class women rather than middle- and upper-class women, who are more commonly treated in historical analyses of the period, in part because written records about higher class people are more common. [4] To 'Joy My Freedom won the H. L. Mitchell Award from the Southern Historical Association, [5] the Letitia Brown Memorial Book Prize from the Association of Black Women's Historians, and the Book of the Year Award in 1997 from the International Labor History Association. [1] The book was the focus of a symposium in the journal Labor History . [6]

In 2017, Hunter published Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century. The book examines how enslavement affected the marriage practices and family lives of African Americans, and how the legacy of slavery continued to do so in the decades following the end of slavery. [7] Bound in Wedlock chronicles a variety of types of intimate relationships, from highly temporary arrangements to ones that were as permanent as possible, both within and outside of formal legal marriage institutions. [8] Hunter analyzes the complicated legality of marital unions between enslaved people, and argues that legal definitions of marriage were often used to break apart the family structures of enslaved people. [9] Hunter also studies the status of marriage law during the Civil War, and in the antebellum era. [9]

In 2018, Hunter was named the Edwards Professor of American History at Princeton University. [10] She gave the keynote address at the unvieling of the statue of William B. Gould. [11]

Bibliography

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Tera Hunter | Department of History". history.princeton.edu. Princeton University. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  2. ↑ Holsey, Bayo (January 1998). "Review of To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War". Transforming Anthropology. 7 (1): 76–77. doi:10.1525/tran.1998.7.1.76.
  3. ↑ Shannon, Janet Harrison (1 April 2000). "Review of To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War". Signs. 25 (3): 908–912. doi:10.1086/495488.
  4. 1 2 White, Deborah Gray (June 1998). "Review of To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War". The Journal of American History. 85 (1): 290–291. doi:10.2307/2568552. JSTOR   2568552.
  5. ↑ "H. L. Mitchell Award". thesha.org. Southern Historical Association. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  6. ↑ Dana Frank; Evelyn Nakano Glenn; Sharon Harley; Lawrence W. Levine (May 1998). "Symposium on Tera Hunter: To 'Joy My Freedom--The labor historian's new clothes". Labor History. 39 (2): 169–187. doi:10.1080/00236679812331387330.
  7. ↑ Lapsansky, Emma (1 July 2018). "Review of Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century". Canadian Journal of History. 53 (2): 287–289. doi:10.3138/cjh.ach.53.2.rev15. S2CID   165351981.
  8. ↑ Ball, Erica L. (2019). "Review of Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century". Journal of the Early Republic. 39 (4): 803–806. doi:10.1353/jer.2019.0108. S2CID   208811541.
  9. 1 2 Parry, Tyler D. (2019). "Review of Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century". The Journal of the Civil War Era. 9 (2): 306–308. doi:10.1353/cwe.2019.0032. S2CID   194369813.
  10. ↑ "Five faculty members named to endowed professorships". princeton.edu. October 4, 2018. Retrieved September 7, 2019.
  11. ↑ "William B. Gould, former enslaved person and Civil War Navy Veteran, honored at statue unveiling on Memorial Day Weekend". The Dedham Times. Vol. 31, no. 23. June 9, 2023. p. 2.
  12. ↑ Shannon, Janet Harrison (April 1, 2000). "To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War. Tera W. Hunter Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction. Laura F. Edwards What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do: Black Professional Women Workers during the Jim Crow Era. Stephanie J. Shaw". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 25 (3): 908–912. doi:10.1086/495488. ISSN   0097-9740.
  13. ↑ Holsey, Bayo (January 1, 1998). "To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War". Transforming Anthropology. 7 (1): 76–77. doi:10.1525/tran.1998.7.1.76. ISSN   1548-7466.
  14. ↑ Faust, Drew Gilpin (July 13, 1997). "Slave Wages". The New York Times. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  15. ↑ Epprecht, Marc (2006). "Review of Dialogues of Dispersal: Gender, Sexuality, and African Diasporas". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 39 (1): 144–147. JSTOR   40034005.
  16. ↑ Robertson, Darryl (August 17, 2017). "V Books: Prof. Tera Hunter Explores Slave Marriages In 'Bound In Wedlock'". Vibe. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  17. ↑ Smith, Mark M. (June 9, 2017). "Till Death or Distance Do Us Part". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved February 15, 2018.
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