This Is Our Home

“An innovative study that advocates for the material culture turn. . . . Stewart builds on the work of scholars who took up the challenge posed by Michel-Rolph Trouillot in Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995). How do we write the history of those who left no archival trace; of those considered inconsequential to the larger historical narrative? Material culture, Stewart demonstrates, offers a path forward.”—Journal of American History

“In the fields of slavery and plantation studies, one of the greatest challenges is balancing a narrative between investigating the brutal, dehumanizing realities of slavery and celebrating the perseverance required to survive it. . . . This Is Our Home navigates this balance impressively. . . . [T]his work shows us the important perspective that historians should bring to material culture studies because of the historically contingent nature of those material sources.”—American Historical Review

“This Is Our Home is crucial to understanding the substantial percentage of freedpeople who chose to remain close to the sites of their bondage after emancipation. . . . It is persuasively argued, empathetic, and clear-eyed about the intensely human attractions of homemaking despite terrible obstacles. . . . Stewart’s study will be useful to a range of students and historians, especially those interested in public history, the South’s built landscapes, and emancipation.”—Journal of Southern History

“This Is Our Home expands the meaning of home, applying it to stories of the enslaved and their efforts in creating a place of their own against the tides of oppression throughout the nineteenth-century South. . . . [Stewart] paints a picture of an expansive and intentional homemaking process, where the enslaved found power and agency as they created their homes.”—North Carolina Historical Review

“This is Our Home is wonderfully written and richly illustrated with numerous images showing the places it explores and the material culture items it discusses. Stewart’s interdisciplinary approach to studying the liberating sense of home among the enslaved makes for compelling reading.”—Emerging Civil War

“A must-read . . . . ”Home“ is an abstract yet powerful concept. This book creatively wrestles with what home meant for enslaved people in the American South. It is a critique of public history and the public interpretation of slavery which seeks to center enslaved people’s living spaces beyond the daily routine of labor exploitation.”—CHOICE

“[A] methodological orientation about which Stewart is transparent [and] an important contribution to a growing body of studies placing material culture at the forefront of recovering enslaved peoples' lived humanity. . . . This Is Our Home makes a significant addition to the pressing need to recover and commemorate lived realities in all their diversity.”—Journal of African American History

“Stewart carefully constructs the world of each site by drawing on archaeological research, textual evidence, material object analysis, and visual sources. . . . Stewart’s thoughtful explication of her choices around terminology, names, and ambiguous evidence demonstrates how interdisciplinary research and engagement with public-facing scholarship can enrich academic historical writing.”—Journal of Social History

“This Is Our Home expands the meaning of home, applying it to stories of the enslaved and their efforts in creating a place of their own against the tides of oppression throughout the nineteenth-century South. . . . She paints a picture of an expansive and intentional homemaking process, where the enslaved found power and agency as they created their homes.”—North Carolina Historical Review

“Stewart’s use of sources is one the greatest strengths of This Is Our Home, especially for scholars and practitioners interested in finding ways to explore the lives of people who were prevented from leaving behind a written record. . . .[F]or those seeking to interpret the stories of enslaved people on plantations, it should be required reading.”—Public Historian