Back
of the Big House : The Architecture of Plantation Slavery
by
John Michael Vlach
Behind
the "big houses" of the antebellum South existed an entirely different
world, socially and architecturally, where slaves lived and worked.
Vlach has chosen over 200 photographs and drawings from the Historic
American Buildings Survey of the 1930s--an archive that has been mined
many times for its images of the planters' residences but almost never
for those of slave dwellings.
"Vlach
interweaves contemporary reports, oral histories of former slaves and
archaeological evidence of surviving outbuildings in an unemotional but
powerful manner."--New York Times Book Review
"[Vlach]
presents us with a book that is at once album, introduction, and overview
of the complexity and diversity of southern plantation architecture."--South
Carolina Historical Magazine
"This
is a solid piece of documentation which forcefully illuminates a neglected
yet pivotal aspect of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reality."--Maryland
Historical Magazine
"One
of the most user-friendly studies of African-American material culture
ever written."--American Historical Review
"Contribute[s]
significantly to the architectural no less than the social history of
the United States from colonization to the Civil War."--Journal of
the Early Republic
"John
Michael Vlach proves himself America's foremost scholar of African American
material culture in this gracefully written and profusely illustrated
examination of the vernacular architecture of plantation slavery. Drawing
upon the best of folklife studies, architectural history, cultural geography,
and historical archaeology as well as the records of the Historical American
Buildings Survey and his own extensive fieldwork, Vlach has produced an
indispensable study."--Charles Joyner, author of Down by the Riverside:
A South Carolina Slave Community
"Vlach
expands our understanding of slave life while illuminating the little-known
world of antebellum southern agriculture. Back of the Big House confirms
Vlach as the preeminent scholar of African-American material culture."--Dell
Upton, University of California, Berkeley
Back
of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery by John Michael
Vlach, is available from the University of North Carolina Press (ISBN:
0-8078-2085-7) Hardcover $45.00 or (ISBN: 0-8078-4412-8) Paperback $22.50
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