Intersections of Gender, Sexuality, Class, Race, Ethnicity, Age, Religion, the Military, etc.

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

The framework of "intersectionality" was coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw for the intersections between racism and sexism, following theorizing and research on these intersections by Bell Hooks in 1984, Joan Smith in 1988, and others. In historical archaeology relationships between gender, class, ethnicity and race were first addressed in some papers in the 1989 SHA gender symposium organized by Suzanne Spencer-Wood. In the 1992 SHA symposium that became the 1994 volume "Those of little Note: Gender, race and class," editor Elizabeth Scott discussed the "interrelatedness" of these social categories and how feminists of color critiqued and corrected middle-class white feminists who universalized their experiences in feminist theories. The term "intersectionality" has been appropriated for analyses of a variety of relationships, sometimes not including gender. But gender is central to the framework of "intersectionality" with other social categories, so it is central to intersections discussed in this symposium.

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Documents
  • Army Wives and Kids: Civilian Lives in Military Context at the Augusta Arsenal (2018)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer M Trunzo. Maggie Needham.

    Between 1826 and 1955, the Augusta Arsenal operated on the land currently occupied by the Summerville Campus of Augusta University. As a military site, it is easy to conceptualize the Arsenal as a male gendered place and associate it almost exclusively with war-related manufacturing activities. However, most of the artifacts recovered from the Arsenal directly address the domestic lives of the people who lived there. Additionally, many artifacts from the Arsenal speak to presence of the often...

  • At the Crossroads: Intersections of Colonization (2018)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Dawn M. Rutecki.

    Intersectionality arose as a strategy for understanding the ways oppression operates simultaneously on multiple aspects of a person’s identity.  As such, it provides a key framework for understanding how gender, race, and religion affected interactions between Europeans and indigenous communities from contact through today.  The missionaries of New Spain, as well as later explorers of the Louisiana Territory, proscribed gendered expectations on indigenous peoples that fundamentally altered their...

  • Intersectional Feminist Theory And Materializations Of Multiple, Fluid, Interacting Gender Identities, Exemplified By Immigrant Participants' Negotiations In Reform Women’s Programs Around The Turn Of The 20th Century (2018)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzanne Spencer-Wood.

    Feminists have theorized intersectionality in two related ways: in1970 Pauli Murray discussed the "multiple barriers of poverty, race and sex," and in 1989 Kimberlé Crenshaw named interlinked racism and sexism intersectionality, which she recently expanded to include classism, heterosexism, homophobia, ableism, etc. Another kind of intersectionality feminists have theorized are the relationships between gender, class, race, ethnicity, religion, age, etc. in people’s identities, which are the...

  • Intersectionality and Plantation Archaeology: Intertwining the Past, Present and Future (2018)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly Kasper. Dwight Fryer. Jamie Evans. Claire Norton.

    Intersectionality is a useful framework to employ when reconstructing the everyday lives of enslaved individuals during the Antebellum. Often, archaeologists find it difficult to create narratives that connect the material culture of the individuals we excavate with their dynamic experiences, especially impacts of sexual and economic exploitation, human rights and the rule of law. This paper focuses on the overlapping of multiple identities (in this case enslaved and free women and men on the...

  • Invisibility and Intersectionality: Seeking Free Black Women in Antebellum Kentucky (2018)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Broughton Anderson.

    Investigation into the lifeways of freedman George White suggest a successful businessman with the means to purchase and keep approximately 300 acres, to purchase and emancipate his family, and to build a safe community for his family and other freed slaves in eastern Kentucky.  However, documentary research revealed only small fragments about the female members of his family. The women are, for the most part, invisible.  This paper uses intersectionality as a theoretical lens to explore the...