[CGED Seminar] The Empire of the Father: The Remaking of Patriarchal Family Government in the Nineteenth Century US

Registration 

Register here. Registration is open from 01/09/2020 09:00(HKT) to 26/10/2020 19:00(HKT) on a first-come-first-served basis.

Time: 7:30 p.m. HKT | 11:30 a.m. GMT | 7:30 a.m. EDT

Abstract 

Since colonial times, the patriarch had been a pillar of state power in the United States. The state governed through the head of the household who was vested with the authority and discretion to govern his dependents, a form of government that William Blackstone famously dubbed the "empire of the father." The rise of the modern liberal state, however, directly challenged the powers of the patriarch by establishing a direct relationship between the state and household dependents. This talk offers the concept of paternal sovereignty as a new framework to understand domestic relations in the Anglo-American Victorian world. It explores the debates over the proper boundaries of paternal power that erupted in the mid-nineteenth century as the demands of abolitionists and women’s…