An engaging look at the rise and fall of cultural diversity in the colonial South and its role in shaping a distinct southern identity
 
The 18th-century South was a true melting pot, bringing together colonists from England, France, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, and other locations, in addition to African slaves—all of whom shared in the experiences of adapting to a new environment and interacting with American Indians. The shared process of immigration, adaptation, and creolization resulted in a rich and diverse historic mosaic of cultures.
 
The cultural encounters of these groups of settlers would ultimately define the meaning of life in the nineteenth-century South. The much-studied plantation society of that era and the Confederacy that sprang from it have become the enduring identities of the South. A full understanding of southern history is not possible, however, without first understanding the intermingling and interactions of the region’s eighteenth-century settlers. In the essays collected here, some of the South’s leading historical archaeologists examine various aspects of the colonial experience, attempting to understand how cultural identity was expressed, why cultural diversity was eventually replaced by a common identity, and how the various cultures intermeshed.
 
Written in accessible language, this book will be valuable to archaeologists and non-archaeologists alike. Cultural, architectural, and military historians, cultural anthropologists, geographers, genealogists, and others interested in the cultural legacy of the South will find much of value in this book.

The Archaeology of Arcuate Communities is an edited collection of ten essays that illuminate how Indigenous communities of the Eastern Woodlands, from 10,000 BC to the 1550s, are analyzed and interpreted by archaeologists today. Volume editors Martin Menz, Analise Hollingshead, and Haley Messer define the persistent circular or “arcuate” pattern of Native settlements in this region as a spatial manifestation of community activities that reinforced group identity alongside plazas, mounds, and other architectural features.

The varied case studies in this volume focus on specific communities, how they evolved, and the types of archaeological data that have been used to assess them. Part I, “Defining the Domestic Unit in Arcuate Communities,” reveals social distinctions between households and household clusters in arcuate communities, how they differ in terms of stylistic patterns and exchange, and how they combined to form distinct social groups at different scales within a broader community. Part II, “Organizing Principles of Arcuate Communities,” broadens the scope to identify the organizing principles of entire arcuate communities, such as the central role of plazas in structuring their development, how the distribution of households and central features within communities was contested and reorganized, and the importance of mounds in both delineating arcuate communities and marking their position on the landscape. Part III, “Comparison and Change in Arcuate Communities,” comprises case studies that examine changes in the organization of arcuate communities over time. Rounding out the volume is a concluding chapter that assesses how and why communities around the world formed in circular patterns.

A valuable resource for archaeologists, this collection will also be of interest to those seeking to learn about Native North American settlement, ceremony, and community organization.
 

A peer-reviewed journal of theatre history and scholarship published annually since 1981 by the Mid-America Theatre Conference

Introduction
—LISA JACKSON-SCHEBETTA, WITH ODAI JOHNSON, CHRYSTYNA DAIL, AND JONATHAN SHANDELL

PART I
STUDIES IN THEATRE HISTORY

Un-Reading Voltaire: The Ghost in the Cupboard of the House of Reason
—ODAI JOHNSON

Caricatured, Marginalized,
and Erased: African American Artists and Philadelphia’s Negro Unit of the FTP, 1936–1939               
—JONATHAN SHANDELL

Stop Your Sobbing: White Fragility, Slippery Empathy, and Historical Consciousness in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate
—SCOTT PROUDFIT

Asia and Alwin Nikolais: Interdisciplinarity, Orientalist Tendencies, and Midcentury American Dance
—ANGELA K. AHLGREN

PART II
WITCH CHARACTERS AND WITCHY PERFORMANCE

Editor’s Introduction to the Special Section
Shifting Shapes: Witch Characters and Witchy Performances
—CHRYSTYNA DAIL

To Wright the Witch: The Case of Joanna Baillie’s Witchcraft
—JANE BARNETTE

Nothing Wicked This Way Comes: Shakespeare’s Subversion of Archetypal Witches in The Winter’s Tale
—JESSICA HOLT

Of Women and Witches: Performing the Female Body in Caryl Churchill’s Vinegar Tom
—MAMATA SENGUPTA

(Un)Limited: The Influence of Mentorship and Father-Daughter Relationships on Elphaba’s Heroine Journey in Wicked
—REBECCA K. HAMMONDS

Immersive Witches: New York City under the Spell of Sleep No More and Then She Fell
—DAVID BISAHA

PART III
Essay from the Conference

The Robert A. Schanke Award-Winning Essay, MATC 2020
New Conventions for a New Generation: High School Musicals and Broadway in the 2010s
—LINDSEY MANTOAN