{"product_id":"like-children-black-prodigy-and-the-measure-of-the-human-in-america-9781479812929","title":"Like Children: Black Prodigy and the Measure of the Human in America","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA new history of manhood, race, and hierarchy in American childhood\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eLike Children\u003c\/i\u003e argues that the child has been the key figure giving measure and meaning to the human in thought and culture since the early American period. Camille Owens demonstrates that white men's power at the top of humanism's order has depended on those at the bottom. As Owens shows, it was childhood's modern arc--from ignorance and dependence to reason and rights--that structured white men's power in early America: by claiming that black adults were like children, whites naturalized black subjection within the American family order. Demonstrating how Americans sharpened the child into a powerful white supremacist weapon, Owens nevertheless troubles the notion that either the child or the human have been figures of unadulterated whiteness or possess stable boundaries. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eLike Children\u003c\/i\u003e recenters the history of American childhood around black children and rewrites the story of the human through their acts. Through the stories of black and disabled children spectacularized as prodigies, Owens tracks enduring white investment in black children's power and value, and a pattern of black children performing beyond white containment. She reconstructs the extraordinary interventions and inventions of figures such as the early American poet Phillis Wheatley, the nineteenth-century pianist Tom Wiggins (Blind Tom), a child known as \"Bright\" Oscar Moore, and the early-twentieth century \"Harlem Prodigy,\" Philippa Schuyler, situating each against the racial, gendered, and developmental rubrics by which they were designated prodigious exceptions. Ultimately, \u003ci\u003eLike Children\u003c\/i\u003e displaces frames of exclusion and dehumanization to explain black children's historical and present predicament, revealing the immense cultural significance that black children have negotiated and what they have done to reshape the human in their own acts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCamille Owens\u003c\/b\u003e is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at McGill University.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"New York University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50893336510738,"sku":"9781479812929","price":31.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_c61ccf33-8e0f-4e3c-8c6d-01a98d5de4cf.jpg?v=1738230542","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/like-children-black-prodigy-and-the-measure-of-the-human-in-america-9781479812929","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}