Become a Readings Member to make your shopping experience even easier. Sign in or sign up for free!

Become a Readings Member. Sign in or sign up for free!

Hello Readings Member! Go to the member centre to view your orders, change your details, or view your lists, or sign out.

Hello Readings Member! Go to the member centre or sign out.

Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948
Hardback

Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948

$384.99
Sign in or become a Readings Member to add this title to your wishlist.

From 1898 onward, the expansion of American militarism and empire abroad increasingly relied on black labor, even as policy remained inflected both by scientific racism and by fears of contagion. Black men and women were mobilized for service in the Spanish-Cuban-American War under the War Department’s belief that Southern blacks carried an immunity against tropical diseases. Later, in World Wars I and II, black troops were stigmatized as members of a contagious venereal race, and were subjected to experimental medical treatments meant to curtail their sexual desires. By turns feared as contagious, and at other times valued for their immunity, black men and women played an important part in the U.S. military’s conscription of racial, gender, and sexual difference, even as they exercised their embattled agency at home and abroad.

By following the scientific, medical, and cultural history of African American enlistment through the archive of American militarism, this book traces the black subjects and agents of empire as they came into contact with a world globalized by warfare.

Read More
In Shop
Out of stock
Shipping & Delivery

$9.00 standard shipping within Australia
FREE standard shipping within Australia for orders over $100.00
Express & International shipping calculated at checkout

MORE INFO
Format
Hardback
Publisher
The University of North Carolina Press
Country
United States
Date
15 June 2020
Pages
288
ISBN
9781469655499

From 1898 onward, the expansion of American militarism and empire abroad increasingly relied on black labor, even as policy remained inflected both by scientific racism and by fears of contagion. Black men and women were mobilized for service in the Spanish-Cuban-American War under the War Department’s belief that Southern blacks carried an immunity against tropical diseases. Later, in World Wars I and II, black troops were stigmatized as members of a contagious venereal race, and were subjected to experimental medical treatments meant to curtail their sexual desires. By turns feared as contagious, and at other times valued for their immunity, black men and women played an important part in the U.S. military’s conscription of racial, gender, and sexual difference, even as they exercised their embattled agency at home and abroad.

By following the scientific, medical, and cultural history of African American enlistment through the archive of American militarism, this book traces the black subjects and agents of empire as they came into contact with a world globalized by warfare.

Read More
Format
Hardback
Publisher
The University of North Carolina Press
Country
United States
Date
15 June 2020
Pages
288
ISBN
9781469655499