{"id":{"repo_id":"buffalo","oai_identifier":"oai:ubir.buffalo.edu:10477/86759"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/buffalo/oai:ubir.buffalo.edu:10477/86759","repository":{"repo_id":"buffalo","name":"Buffalo","base_url":"https://ubir.buffalo.edu/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Separation Anxieties: Laws of Sex and Race in the American Unconscious, 1865-1939","abstract":"Ph.D.","abstract_html":"Ph.D.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Wright, Melissa; 0000-0001-7961-2349"],"institution":"State University of New York at Buffalo","degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Bramen, Carrie","Comparative Literature"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2025,"date_issued":"2025-02-21T21:44:48Z","date_published":"2025-02-21T21:44:48Z","updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:05:37Z","subjects":["American literature","African American studies","women's studies"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/10477/86759","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Bramen, Carrie","Comparative Literature"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Wright, Melissa; 0000-0001-7961-2349"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2025-02-21T21:44:48Z","2020"]},{"key":"dc:publisher","label":"Institution","values":["State University of New York at Buffalo"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Text","Dissertation"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["American literature","African American studies","women's studies"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/10477/86759"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Ph.D.","This dissertation engages with the legal crisis leading up to and following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) through an analysis of law, prohibition, and taboo in the works of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sutton E. Griggs, and Pauline E. Hopkins. In order to understand the intractability of sexism and racism to constitutional or legal reform, this project draws on literature as a necessary supplement to the law, and as a site at which the \"other scene\" of law can be deduced from the contradictions and anxieties internal to white male American culture. Following Sigmund Freud’s reconstruction of the murder of the primal father in Moses and Monotheism (1939) from the traces of its coverup in what would become Hebrew law and culture, this dissertation argues that the blatant hypocrisy of anti-miscegenation laws in the period following the Civil War can be read as a coverup of the nearly ubiquitous crime of rape under U.S. slavery. In contrast to a tendency within psychoanalytic theory to read the Freudian reconstruction as a hypothetical fabrication, I emphasize that these scenes of subjection under chattel slavery are not myths that found the law, but lived historical realities made into quasi-myths through the very function of law. This project contends that we can reimagine the real at stake in Freud’s reconstruction by applying his theoretical model to the post-bellum and post-Reconstruction eras of American life, where the rise of anti-miscegenation law actively repressed—and thus made primal—a history of sexual and racial mixings.","**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact library@buffalo.edu. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.**"]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Separation Anxieties: Laws of Sex and Race in the American Unconscious, 1865-1939"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Bramen, Carrie","Comparative Literature"],"dc:creator":["Wright, Melissa; 0000-0001-7961-2349"],"dc:date":["2025-02-21T21:44:48Z","2020"],"dc:description":["Ph.D.","This dissertation engages with the legal crisis leading up to and following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) through an analysis of law, prohibition, and taboo in the works of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sutton E. Griggs, and Pauline E. Hopkins. In order to understand the intractability of sexism and racism to constitutional or legal reform, this project draws on literature as a necessary supplement to the law, and as a site at which the \"other scene\" of law can be deduced from the contradictions and anxieties internal to white male American culture. Following Sigmund Freud’s reconstruction of the murder of the primal father in Moses and Monotheism (1939) from the traces of its coverup in what would become Hebrew law and culture, this dissertation argues that the blatant hypocrisy of anti-miscegenation laws in the period following the Civil War can be read as a coverup of the nearly ubiquitous crime of rape under U.S. slavery. In contrast to a tendency within psychoanalytic theory to read the Freudian reconstruction as a hypothetical fabrication, I emphasize that these scenes of subjection under chattel slavery are not myths that found the law, but lived historical realities made into quasi-myths through the very function of law. This project contends that we can reimagine the real at stake in Freud’s reconstruction by applying his theoretical model to the post-bellum and post-Reconstruction eras of American life, where the rise of anti-miscegenation law actively repressed—and thus made primal—a history of sexual and racial mixings.","**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact library@buffalo.edu. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.**"],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/10477/86759"],"dc:language":["eng"],"dc:publisher":["State University of New York at Buffalo"],"dc:rights":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."],"dc:subject":["American literature","African American studies","women's studies"],"dc:title":["Separation Anxieties: Laws of Sex and Race in the American Unconscious, 1865-1939"],"dc:type":["Text","Dissertation"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:05:37Z"}