Bookshelf

Alumni and faculty members who would like to have their books considered for this listing should contact Stacey Himmelberger, editor of Hamilton magazine. This list, which dates back to 2018, is updated periodically with books appearing alphabetically on the date of entry.

Setting Slavery’s Limits: Physical Confrontations in Antebellum Virginia, 1801–1860 by Christopher H. Bouton ’09

October 1, 2021

Tags Alumni Book

(Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2019)
One reviewer noted, “Scrutinizing a wealth of slave narratives, plantation records, and trial transcripts, the book documents the violent resistance of enslaved people … [who] did not violently rebel to claim their freedom; instead, they struck out in defiance or exasperation, to protect their honor, to reclaim their masculinity, and to defend their femininity. These acts did little to ultimately change the conditions for enslaved people; however, such physical confrontation ‘provided [them] with hope against a system of oppression designed to destroy their humanity.’”