Tag: Jamie Bufalino

Money, Power, and Race: The US State’s Involvement in the Reproductive Lives of African American Women

Presenter: Dana Glasscock

Mentors: Jamie Bufalino, History; Corbett Upton, English

Oral Presentation

Majors: History and English

Within the United States, the relationship between the state and African American women’s reproductive roles has been complicated and contentious. In the brutal control of reproduction for profit within slavery the role of the state was to justify slave owners’ use of black women’s bodies without regard for the women’s choice. Contrasting this systemized reproduction for economic gain is the condemning attitude of the state toward African American women’s reproduction past reconstruction and into the 20th century through financially punitive and manipulative means including Welfare reforms, Social Services policies, and sterilization policies that disproportionally affected African American women as a result of lingering biases. In the context of the second half of the 20th century this role of the state was still economically motivated as an effort to avoid spending on mothers or children deemed less deserving. Legal and social historians including Linda Kerber and Dorothy Roberts have noted how the paternal and pejorative elements of state legislation and public efforts resemble the methods of manipulation found under slavery. Though the specifics of the state’s actions differ, examining the similarity in root justifications and their connections to legal and economic motivations of the state allows for clearer understanding of the tense relationship between the state and African American women’s reproduction. My work seeks to explore specific legal and political tactics, motivations, and implications of the role of the state in the lives and reproductive experiences of African American women, focusing on two periods of the US: slavery and the second half of the 20th century.

Early Identity Building in the Boy Scouts of America 1910–1912

Presenter: Charles Steenkolk

Faculty Mentor: Michael Peixoto, Jamie Bufalino

Presentation Type: Poster 92

Primary Research Area: Humanities

Major: History, Spanish

The Boy Scouts of America is one of the most popular, largest, and longest running youth organizations in the United States. Created in 1910, the organization competed with other youth organizations that started around the same time. This article looks at the incorporating documents, the letters and correspondence, and the minutes of the first national meetings, in order to identify and track the initial conceptualizations of the BSA as it asserted itself in the American society. The documents span from 1910 to 1912, the first two years of the BSA. The documents show that the future of the organization was not clear at the time, and that there were significant issues presented to the organization as it formed. The documents also show that the BSA was a composition of the individual people that founded it, and the consensus on a course of action was not present at first. The individual decisions of the leaders of the organization led to a more clear definition of the organization’s niche in society, and its identity as a youth organization.

Criminalizing Black Reproduction: “Crack Babies,” Black Motherhood, and State Intrusion

Presenter: Dana Glasscock

Faculty Mentor: Sharon Luk, Jamie Bufalino

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: History, English

The phenomenon of “crack babies” as a public concern addressed by state policies and media focus serves as an example of how intersections between racial ideology, women’s reproductive rights, and state policies frequently functions in a way that negatively and disproportionately affects African American women. Examining the specific historical backdrop of “crack babies” highlights how the issue and state-sanctioned response disproportionally targeted African American women’s reproduction, laying the foundation for understanding how this moment functioned as a concrete effect of negative racial ideology. In the 1980s and 1990s “crack epidemic,” media focused on crack as a danger to society and the new drug of criminals. Through state campaigns including Reagan’s “War on Drugs” and Clinton’s welfare reforms, crack was constructed as the drug of poor, inner-city, predominantly black populations, contributing to the narrative of social dangers and criminality built around the existence of black Americans. The issue of “crack babies” spotlighted black motherhood, portraying their reproduction as the result and continuation of criminality and addiction, where state action was positioned as the solution. Through examining the work of historians and theorists including Dorothy Roberts, Barbara Fields, and Ruth Gilmore examining race, law, and ideology, it can be seen how the issue of “crack babies” stands as an historical example of racial ideology with real repercussions both for the population involved, and in the public’s perception and condemnation of black motherhood.

Prostitution in the Frontier West

Presenter(s): Mira Cohen − History

Faculty Mentor(s): Jamie Bufalino, Marsha Weisiger

Oral Session 3SW

Research Area: History

The popular history of the American Frontier West is replete with stereotypical characters: miners, farmers, ranchers, railroad workers, and even prostitutes. While women were brought out west so the men could marry and have a family, many women travelled out to the West to seek their fortune and escape the restrictive Victorian American culture of the East. Some women, already prostitutes, went west planning to continue their trade, free of the judgments of Eastern morality. Other women went west and eventually resorted to prostitution in order to provide for themselves. Both types discovered financial advantages along with more social and political freedom compared to any other women in the country. While some historians overlooked the influence women had in shaping the Old west, my research suggests that women played a significant role, as women accumulated property and therefore became influential members of cities and towns. My research project focuses on the gendered nature of economic and politic power in the United States during the 19th century, using evidence from research papers and book other scholars have done on prostitution and women in the Old west, diary entries, personal accounts, and books written about sexual morality. Based on these sources and personal narratives, readers and other scholars can learn that women during this time period had the most personal freedom in the entire country.