Who’s Black and Why? : : A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race / / ed. by Andrew S. Curran, Henry Louis Gates Jr.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2022 English
• HerausgeberIn: Curran, Andrew S.,; Gates Jr., Henry Louis,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.)

The first translation and publication of sixteen submissions to the notorious eighteenth-century Bordeaux essay contest on the cause of black skin—an indispensable chronicle of the rise of scientifically based, anti-Black racism. In 1739 Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences announced a contest for t...

Table of Contents

• Frontmatter
• Contents
• Preface: Who’s Black and Why?
• Note on the Translations
• Part I
• Introduction: The 1741 Contest on the “Degeneration” of Black Skin and Hair
• 1. Blackness through the Power of God
• 2. Blackness through the Soul of the Father
• 3. Blackness through the Maternal Imagination
• 4. Blackness as a Moral Defect
• 5. Blackness as a Result of the Torrid Zone
• 6. Blackness as a Result of Divine Providence
• 7. Blackness as a Result of Heat and Humidity
• 8. Blackness as a Reversible Accident
• 9. Blackness as a Result of Hot Air and Darkened Blood
• 10. Blackness as a Result of a Darkened Humor
• 11. Blackness as a Result of Blood Flow
• 12. Blackness as an Extension of Optical Theory
• 13. Blackness as a Result of an Original Sickness
• 14. Blackness Degenerated
• 15. Blackness Classified
• 16. Blackness Dissected
• Part II
• Introduction: The 1772 Contest on “Preserving” Negroes
• 1. A Slave Ship Surgeon on the Crossing
• 2. A Parisian Humanitarian on the Slave Trade
• 3. Louis Alphonse, Bordeaux Apothecary, on the Crossing
• Select Chronology of the Representation of Africans and Race
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Credits
• Index