Railroad prints

This is a railroad print form Currier and Ives. To me this print portrays the growth and development of the nation, with people settling around tracks, building up new towns.

Railroad prints

This is a print from Currier and Ives. The train in this picturing is moving in a westward direction; to me this suggests the westward expansion of America,of America having no limits, in other words Manifest Destiny.

Assessing the Sweet Briar Slave Cabin

Isis Balico

!9^th Century American Economics

10/9/12

Professor Rianville

Assessing the Sweet Briar Salve Cabin

              Sweet Briar College is very fortunate to be able to claim to hold a piece of American history on its very own grounds. The piece of history I am referring to is the slave cabin right behind the Sweet Briar House. This cabin is not only a testament to the history of Sweet Briar, which was originally a plantation, but also to a crucial time period in American history, that later became a scar on this country. To understand the history of this cabin is to also gain insight into this crucial time period in American history  (slavery), and also the people who were the main subjects of this time period, the slave themselves.

                I am not very proud to admit this, but before I arrived to Sweet Briar I didn’t know much about the slave cabin on campus. My knowledge of slave cabins was limited, and what a slave cabin looked like in my mind was that which fit my schema of a slave cabin, a schema formed at a young age from watching educational children’s programs like Liberty Kids. I was aware however that Sweet Briar was a former plantation and that a slave cabin still remained on campus, though to be honest I thought that there was more than one. As a person with a great interest in Archeology, while researching the major and the courses offered here at Sweet Briar I did learn that the slave cabins were integrated in the lessons of the Archeology class and that it was still being excavated, though not vigorously. This was about the extent of my knowledge of the slave cabin on campus.

              Now having gained some knowledge about the slave cabin since arriving on campus I now have a broader spectrum of thought concerning the cabin. In terms of the college I now believe the slave cabins make Sweet Briar truly unique.  Sweet Briar being the only college in the world to have a former slave cabin on campus (Alumnae Magazine), sets SBC apart from other colleges and universities, giving it a distinction other colleges can’t claim to have. The slave cabin is not only unique but a integral part of the college’s history. The cabin reminds us of the origins of this school as a plantation, and serves as a reminder and a testament to the people who worked this land with their own bare hands.

           The slave cabin though also brings up many questions too, questions I hope some day to receive answers to, if not at the very least speculations. Whenever I think of the slave cabin, and the other twenty-seven that originally stood along the one that still remains, my mind always jumps to thoughts of the slaves that had once occupied them. I begin to speculate and wonder on a broad spectrum of questions particularly pertaining to the slaves’ thoughts, feelings, and their attitudes. What was their way of surviving bondage; was Indiana Fletch Williams a good, fair owner; did they like her; were they constantly afraid of being separated and sold, never to see each other again, or was Indiana not the type of person to separate mother and daughter or son? These questions persist in my mind, and I would appreciate receiving answers to them, though I’m aware that this would be very difficult because most answers to questions like these are found in journals of some kind, and most if not all the slave on this plantation were illiterate.

                 There is information however that we do have at our disposal that is definitely worth sharing. For being so small the slave cabin is a large monument in terms of meaning and representation of not only the history of Sweet Briar but also of broader American history. This cabin stand as a representative of a defining period in American history; a time period that we now look back on and learn from, to be kind, fair and to treat each other equally. This being said, the idea of the cabin being a representative of the a period in time, is a concept that would greatly attract students into learning more about the cabin and paying a visit to this homage of history. An exhibit displaying this concept in my opinion would be very popular indeed.

                 Though the cabin saw a time of American history where human inequality unjustly prevailed, it has also seen the changes in society and the righting of this injustice. The slave cabin is apart of Sweet Briar history; it is a journal of the hardships faced by slaves, a journal of the changes in society since this time of oppression, and a monument of the roots of this college.

 Work Cited     

Whitley, Ann M. "Recycling a Campus Relic." Alumnae Magazine (n.d.): n. pag. Print.

Assignment 4

Isis Balico
19th Century American Economics
Professor Rainville
Assignment 4/ Marcel Mauss

        Marcel Mauss was born in Epinal, France in 1872, and died in 1950. He was the nephew of the famous sociologist Emile Durkheim, and he himself was a sociologist and an anthropologist. He “attended the University of Bordeaux, and studied philosophy under his Durkheim, Alferd Espinas and Hamelin”, (The Ethnological Theory of Marcel, Seth Leacock (1)). Mauss taught for a very long period of time, beginning his teaching career at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Esutdes at the University of Paris in 1900 (1). In 1902 he became the head of a course called “ ’ L’ histoire des religions des peuples non-civilses’ and taught this course till 1930, until he began to teach the course at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Estudes, and then the same course at the College de France” (1). His interest and research varied quite widely, everything from “sacrifice and magic to various aspects of psychology and suicide among Celts” (1).  He was a follower of Durkheim, and “worked in conjunction with Durkheim, Paul Fauconnet, Henri Hubert, F. Simiand, Henri Beuchat, Maxime David, and Robert Hertz; practically all of his early work was written in conjunction with another member of this group” (1). His personal life does seem to have influenced his work. Durkheim was his uncle and Mauss “applied many of his uncle’s ideas to his work” (1), this may have to do with fact that many of his colleagues, including Beuchat, David, and Hertz were killed during or died during World War two: his uncle, Durkheim also died after the war. It is believed that “this was emotional incentive and beyond intellectual conviction, which operated to keep Mauss faithful to Durkheim’s ideas” (1).


         Marcel Mauss was a respected sociologist and made two major theoretic contributions to the field. Which have led others to develop them. The first contribution is a theory called “The Gift” (1924); in this theory Mauss  “explores gift exchanges in various cultures and highlights the reciprocal nature of gifts and the obligation of the receiver to repay the debt” (The Gift (2)). In essence this theory states that the object given is in part a piece of the giver and it is the responsibility of the receiver to give a gift in return of equal value (2). The other theory that Mauss developed was “’ The Body’” (2), where Mauss describes the “’techniques of the body’ as highly developed body actions that embody aspects of a given culture” (2).  It is Mauss’s theory of “The Gift”, though, that portrays some of his ideas of what value is; Mauss thought of the gift exchange as a way to “create alliances and obligations between individuals or groups who might otherwise have nothing to do with one another” (Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, David Graeber, page 27 (3)). The idea of value arises  “the recipient feeling compelled to return a counter gift of roughly equal value” (page 35) (3). This approaches the question of value when the recipient thinks of what is of equal value to be used as a counter gift, what is valuable?







Bibliography

1)"The Gift." N.p., n.d. Web.
2)Graeber, David. "Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams [Paperback]." PALGRAVE, n.d. Web. Sept. 2012.
3)Leacock, Seth. "The Ethnological Theory of Marcel Mauss." N.p., n.d. Web.

SBC Currency

This is my SBC currency based on using the Library on campus as a form of currency. This is how my currency would look.

Artwork at SBC

This a art piece that I saw in Bendict. I really love the impressionist style of the piece of work, and the sense of ultimate calm before dawn. It's amazing to me how the artist could completely capture the calm before the dark. It's peaceful. This was painted by Elizabeth Hunt Barrett in 1931 and it is called "Dusk over Sweet Briar from Mt. St. Angelo".

American Econmics

This is a hitching post on the upper quad. This hitching post is where students and visitors would tie up their horses.