Initial response to “Miscegenation” post

[Update: some obvious errors corrected; some phrasing now (I hope) a little clearer]
I’m truly appreciative of the thoughtful, thorough, and challenging responses to my previous post. You have given me much to think about and re-think. I’ve been quiet on this end in part because of teaching duties but mostly because I needed [...]

“Miscegenation” as (a) “domestic issue”

It seems felicitous that I’m beginning this post on April 14: 180 years ago today, Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language. I say this because the word “miscegenation,” whose usage in these pages I’ll be discussing here, is in every sense an American word. More about that later.
I’m writing [...]

Forays into the academic blogosphere

In a small exercise in scholarly self-aggrandizement, I’ve created a wiki page for good old Domestic Issue over at the very handy but (so far) modestly-sized AcademicBlogs Wiki. Now, I sit back and watch visits here jump into the tens per day.
It’s via that wiki that I’ve found a couple of blogs with foci [...]

The “encounter with the Encounter”: New-World-centric reading

Note: This, with a little fiddling around with wording and minus footnotes, is an excerpt from my dissertation’s introduction. Context: The intro. begins with a lengthy discussion of Columbus’s voyages and how his confusion in thinking he was in Asia arose, basically, from not seeing what was around him–by insisting that he could be [...]

Hither and yon: posts from elsewhere

The links that follow are posts that originally appeared at my “home” blog that touch on this blog’s preoccupations and will probably end up being incorporated into the book project, even if only tangentially. Consider this page, then, as being as much a sort of collections of notes to myself as an actual post [...]

Melville’s “isolatoes” and mulattoes: a query

First, a couple of passages to consider.
From The Cambridge History of American Literature:
If black characters possess a double consciousness [see: W. E. B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk], would mulattoes be trebly conscious? On an individual level the mulatto’s fortunes seem to reflect the larger society: as blacks can’t belong to mainstream America, [...]

Some good news

My sabbatical application was approved by my college’s committee for the coming fall. So, beginning this summer the content here, such as it will be, will increase apace.
My site director (the administrator in charge of the management of the location of the college where I teach) actually learned of my sabbatical before I did [...]