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Activities: Context Activities
Core Contexts
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The Radical in the Kitchen: Women, Domesticity, and Social Reform
The lives of most middle-class white women in nineteenth-century America were structured by an ideology known as the "Cult of Domesticity," or the "Cult of True Womanhood." This influential ideal of femininity stressed the importance of motherhood, homemaking, piety, and purity. While men were expected to... 
Resistance, Rebellion, and Running Away: Acts of Defiance in Slave Culture
Many white slaveholders liked to think of their slaves as "happy" or "contented," imagining that the slaves viewed the plantation as a family and the master as a benevolent father. But most slaves' lives were far from comfortable: even owners...
Stirring Things Up: Slaves and the Creation of African American Culture
While it is important to understand the harshness and oppression that were inherent in slave life, it is equally important to appreciate the fact that African American slaves developed a vibrant life-affirming culture in the face of...
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Extended Contexts
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The Plantation: Cultivating a Myth
The ideal of gracious plantation life continues to dominate American images of the antebellum South: Hollywood movies and nostalgic
novels have portrayed the Old South as a land of enormous wealth and leisure, filled with beautiful...
Beyond the Pale: Interracial Relationships and "The Tragic Mulatta"
In nineteenth-century America, interracial romantic and sexual relationships were considered taboo within white culture. Viewed by many as leading to the "degeneration" of the white race, "racial mixing" was a locus of anxiety...
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