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Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery
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Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery Paperback - 1993

by John Michael Vlach

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Behind the "big houses" of the antebellum South existed an entirely different world, socially and architecturally, where slaves lived and worked. Vlach has chosen over 200 photographs and drawings from the Historic American Buildings Survey of the 1930s--an archive that has been mined many times for its images of the planters' residences but almost never for those of slave dwellings.

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From the publisher

Behind the "Big Houses" of the antebellum South existed a different world, socially and architecturally, where slaves lived and worked. John Michael Vlach explores the structures and spaces that formed the slaves' environment. Through photographs and the words of former slaves, he portrays the plantation landscape from the slaves' own point of view.

The plantation landscape was chiefly the creation of slaveholders, but Vlach argues convincingly that slaves imbued this landscape with their own meanings. Their subtle acts of appropriation constituted one of the more effective strategies of slave resistance and one that provided a locus for the formation of a distinctive African American culture in the South.

Vlach has chosen more than 200 photographs and drawings from the Historic American Buildings Survey -- an archive that has been mined many times for its images of the planters' residences but rarely for those of slave dwellings. In a dramatic photographic tour, Vlach leads readers through kitchens, smokehouses, dairies, barns and stables, and overseers' houses, finally reaching the slave quarters. To evoke a firsthand sense of what it was like to live and work in these spaces, he includes excerpts from the moving testimonies of former slaves drawn from the Federal Writers' Project collections.

From the jacket flap

Exploring the structures and spaces used by slaves on antebellum plantations, Vlach shows how slaves subtly appropriated this landscape as their own. These newly claimed spaces fostered a feeling of community that served as a seedbed for further resistance and for the invention and maintenance of a distinctive African American culture. 206 illustrations. A New York Times Notable Book.

Details

  • Title Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery
  • Author John Michael Vlach
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 278
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S.A.
  • Publication date 1993-05-28
  • Features Bibliography, Index
  • ISBN 9780807844120 / 0807844128
  • Weight 1.75 lbs (0.79 kg)
  • Dimensions 11.12 x 8.54 x 0.82 in (28.24 x 21.69 x 2.08 cm)
  • Reading level 1550
  • Themes
    • Ethnic Orientation: African American
  • Category Architecture
  • Library of Congress subjects Southern States - Social conditions, Plantation life - Southern States - History
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 92034579
  • Dewey Decimal Code 975.004

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Citations

  • School Library Journal, 11/01/1993, Page 152

About the author

John Michael Vlach is professor of American studies and anthropology and director of the folklife program at The George Washington University. His books include The Planter's Prospect: Privilege and Slavery in Plantation Paintings and The Afro-American Tradition in the Decorative Arts.

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Back of the Big House : The Architecture of Plantation Slavery

Back of the Big House : The Architecture of Plantation Slavery

by John Michael Vlach

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University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Paperback. Acceptable. Disclaimer:A readable copy. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact. Pages can include considerable notes-in pen or highlighter-but the notes cannot obscure the text. At ThriftBooks, our motto is: Read More, Spend Less.Dust jacket quality is not guaranteed.
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Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. paperback. fine. 8 1/2 x 11 " 258 pages. part of The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies. priority and international shipping will be extra, please inquire.
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Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Very Good. 1993. Paperback. 0807844128 . Light edge wear. A nice, solid copy. ; Fred W. Morrison Series In Southern Studies; B & W Illustrations; 8.5 X 0.7 X 11 inches; 258 pages .
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BACK OF THE BIG HOUSE The Architecture of Plantation Slavery

BACK OF THE BIG HOUSE The Architecture of Plantation Slavery

by Vlach, John Michael

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The University of North Carolina Press. NF. 1993. Paperback. Paperback in Near Fine condition. Fred W. Morrison Series In Southern Studies. 8.5 X 0.7 X 11 inches. 278 pages. Signature and stamp of the previous owner on the half title page - otherwise, this is a clean, sharp copy . Quick shipping, excellent customer service. All books carefully packaged in boxes and ship with tracking information. .
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Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery
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Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery

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Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery
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Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery

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University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Fine. Vlach, John Michael. Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. xviii, 258pp. Indexed. Illustrated. 4to. Paperback. Book condition: Near fine.
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Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies)

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Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies)

by Vlach, John Michael

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The University of North Carolina Press, 1993-05-28. Paperback. Very Good. 8x0x11. [Interesting provenance: From the private library of renowned historian, Philip D. Morgan.] Softcover. Good binding and cover. Edge wear. Contemporary signature of Morgan on front end page, else unmarked. <br> From the professional library of Dr. Philip D. Morgan, a professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. Morgan specializes in the African-American experience, the history of slavery, the early Caribbean, and the study of the early Atlantic world. Morgan is the author of more than 14 books on Colonial America and African American history. He has won both the Bancroft Prize and the Frederick Douglass Prize for his book Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (1998).
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