Annotated Bibliography/Resources
For the historical background on American Indians the most useful sources were: The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk, and Bloody Mohawk: The French and Indian War & American Revolution on New York’s Frontier by Richard Berleth. These books outline Indian-colonist conflict and cooperation and between the two books, cover a long timespan.
For background and information about the key images in the first half of this unit I relied on Painting Indians and Building Empires in North America 1710-1840 by William H. Truettner, and American Adversaries: West and Copley in a Transatlantic World by Emily Ballew Neff and Kaylin H. Weber. These sources offer analysis of the visual images as well as the historical context and background of the artists who created them.
The second half of the unit is about African descended women and the most useful sources for background information on this section were: Centering the Periphery: Chaos, Order, and the Ethnohistory of Dominica
By Patrick L. Baker, Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by Thavolia Glymph, and Cotton: The Fabric that Made the World, by Giorgio Riello.
In terms of the art and images used in the second half of the unit Colouring the Caribbean: Race and the art of Agostino Brunias by Mia L. Bagneris, as well as Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World by Anna Arabindan-Kesson. These sources help contextualize the images of African descended women. They shed light on the apparent contradictions of some women of color wearing luxurious clothing, while others are depicted in shapeless clothes made from “slave cloth.”
An excellent list of suggested readings and sources for early America can also be found through NY History.org website educational curriculum Women and the American Story Which is a digital curriculu for k-12 classrooms.
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