Review of Stanley Elkins' work
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996
From: Bill Patterson
Subject: Query: Stanley Elkins review
Dear H-South:
I am preparing an historiographic essay on Stanley Elkins' and his 1959 Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life.
I need suggestions about recent interpretations of Elkins. Did his analysis in Slavery result largely from its time and milieu? Who are the advocates of his methodology today?
Thanks,
Bill Patterson
Univ. of South Alabama
Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996
From: Steven Kantrowitz
Subject: Re: Query: Stanley Elkins review
Bill -
You might take a look at Nell Painter's article "Soul Murder and Slavery: Toward a Fully Loaded Cost-Accounting," in _U.S. History as Women's History_.
Steven Kantrowitz Asst. Professor, Dept. of History 5110 Humanities Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison Box 5017 455 N. Park St. o:263-1844 h:238-5315 Madison, WI 53706-1483 e:skantrow@facstaff.wisc.edu
Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996
From: Louise P. Maxwell
Subject: Re: Query: Stanley Elkins review
To Bill Patterson, re his querry about Elkins: A good starting place for positioning Elkins within the historiography is the essay, "The Slavery Experience," in _Interpreting Southern History_, John B. Boles and Evelyn Thomas Nolen, eds. Since this essay is now a bit outdated, I would also recommend Peter Kolchin's _American Slavery_.
Good luck.
Louise P. Maxwell
lpm8287@is2.NYU.EDU
Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996
From: Chris Morris
Subject: Re: Query: Stanley Elkins review
For a piece that revive Elkins, somewhat, to make it relevant today, see Bertram Wyatt-Brown's "Mask of Obedience: Male Slave Psychology in the Old South" AHR 93 (December 1988):1228-1252.
Chris Morris
morris@uta.edu
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996
From: Leesha Faulkner
Subject: Re: Query: Stanley Elkins review
If you want to know about Stanley Elkins, I suggest two sources: The Debate Over Slavery: Stanley Elkins and his Critics ed. by Leslie Howard Owens, I think, early 1970s (?) and Peter Kolchin's Reevaluating the Antebellum Slave Community: A Comparative Perspective in The Journal of American History, Vol. 70 No. 3, December 1983, and one of the best historiographical pieces I've read on the subject.
Leesha Faulkner
University of Southern Mississippi
faulkner@whale.st.usm.edu
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996
From: Patrick Rael
Subject: Re: Query: Stanley Elkins review
You're bound to get a slough of cites, including Eileen Kraditor's book on _Elkins and his Critics_. Of more recent note, many public debates continue to use the "social pathology" model pioneered by Elkins, Moynihan, and E. Franklin Frazier. In the early '80s, Bill Moyers put together a television documentary called "The Vanishing Black Family," which was built squarely on this work, and later roundly criticized in a special issue of _The Nation_ called "Scapegoating the Black Family" (sorry, I don't have the cite at hand -- it must have been about '89 or '90). Most recently, Dinesh D'Souza's _The End of Racism_ has performed the neat trick of resurrecting Elkins wholecloth, minus the trace of liberal sympathy apparent in Elkin's work. The enlightened D'Souza thus tells us that the problems of poor black people result not from Charles Murray's notion of inherent intellectual differences, but from blacks' "dysfunctional culture." Ah, how far we've come since 1959.
Patrick Rael
Bowdoin College
prael@polar.bowdoin.edu
Date: Tue 13 Feb 1996
From: Eric Tscheschlok
Subject: Re: Query: Stanley Elkins review
In response to Bill Patterson's query about Stanley Elkins:
As 2 years of experience with undergraduates has hammered home the need never to assume the obvious, I will offer an obvious starting point--Ann J. Lane (ed.), *The Debate over Slavery: Stanley Elkins and His Critics* (1971). Of a more recent vintage is Bertram Wyatt-Brown, "Stanley Elkins and Northern Reform Culture" in his *Yankee Saints and Southern Sinners*. This about exhausts my knowledge of Elkins literature; I hope it is of some use.
Eric Tscheschlok
Auburn University
Humanities & Social
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