Articles by Ann Ostendorf
Romani Studies, 2024
American historians have created an historical absence by ignoring Romani people's presence in ev... more American historians have created an historical absence by ignoring Romani people's presence in evidence from the past. The origins of this "absence-ing" are multifaceted and interrelated, but fundamentally stem from the continued influence of out-of-date and unprofessional ways of thinking and knowing. Examining and understanding "absence-ing" requires a consideration of the nature of the discipline of history as well as a history of the missing historicization of Romani Americans. The consequences of the "absence-ing" of Romani people from American histories have negatively and distinctively influenced four different groups of people: historians of the Americas; historians of Romani people in Europe; Romani studies scholars of the Americas who are not historians; and Romani Americans. The harm that each of these four groups experiences builds upon and influences the others. Epistemic injustice is thus perpetuated in linked ways.
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Romano Dzaniben , 2022
Romani experiences in the eighteenth-century French (and then Spanish) colony of Louisiana reveal... more Romani experiences in the eighteenth-century French (and then Spanish) colony of Louisiana reveal how diverse evolving American racial regimes were informed by and overlapped with older European anti-Romani sentiments. Many Roma appear in Louisiana records at the crux of solidifying racial categories. Romani women who married and partnered with Black and Native American men were most consistently labeled with words that referenced their Romani heritage. Their sexual choices reveal a perception of their racial liminality that only gradually disappeared. A self-described “Boheme” man’s court testimony, the only known self-narration by a colonial Caribbean Rom, attests to his struggle to situate himself into the distinctively fluid racialized social order of Louisiana. Such choices reveal Romani attempts to engage racial categories to suit their own interests. Yet without guaranteed full membership into colonial whiteness, their subjugated position limited their possibilities. A journey across the Atlantic forced French Roma to confront, and then position themselves into, a new social order not yet detached from the one they left behind.
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Early American Studies, 2021
In 1720, thirteen deported French Bohemian (Romani) families disembarked in the floundering Louis... more In 1720, thirteen deported French Bohemian (Romani) families disembarked in the floundering Louisiana colony. Anti-Bohemian sentiment combined with a growing French Empire in need of able-bodied and reproductive laborers to dislocate these families from their already precarious lives. Over the next century, as Louisiana increasingly developed along new and more intransigent racialized lines, Bohemians navigated and helped construct this emergent racial order in diverse ways. Despite the formation of an initial Bohemian community in eighteenth-century Louisiana, their descendants were eventually distributed into new colonial racial categories. The racial potential of Louisiana Bohemians declined as their actions, especially their sexual choices, determined where they, and their descendants, might racially situate. Both self- and other-ascribed Bohemian identity eventually, if unevenly, lost relevance in French, Spanish and U.S.-controlled Louisiana as other more powerful racialized categories and identities prevailed. This article attends to the history of the colonial Louisiana Bohemian community in order to broaden the historical knowledge of the Romani diaspora, complement the existing scholarship on the Louisiana colony and state, and continue to fine-tune our understandings of racial formation in early America.
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Frühneuzeit-Info , 2020
In the summer of 1743, Jean Baptiste “La Chaume” Chevalier spoke the only known extant first-pers... more In the summer of 1743, Jean Baptiste “La Chaume” Chevalier spoke the only known extant first-person account of colonial North American life by a “Gypsy”. His oral testimony, given and recorded in French colonial Louisiana’s capital city of New Orleans, provides a window into his life as a soldier and convict laborer (forçat) in this nascent outpost at the edge of empire. While undergoing questioning for attempted suicide, La Chaume exposed his inner life to the court. He described the incessant labor and cruel treatment he had been subjected to and explained his attempts to escape his misery. An interrogation of the circumstances related to La Chaume opens up the world of French colonial Louisiana from the perspective of one virtually never considered. Doing so also reveals how La Chaume struggled to situate himself in the distinctively fluid social order of the developing colony. His concern with escape, justice and honor reveal the disconcerting racialized stratifications in violent genesis and hint at his sense of confused desperation when trying to place himself within this uncertain social order.
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Critical Romani Studies, 2019
This article situates the historical “Egyptian,” more commonly
referred to as “Gypsy,” into the i... more This article situates the historical “Egyptian,” more commonly
referred to as “Gypsy,” into the increasingly racist legal structures
formed in the British North American colonies and the early
United States, between the 1690s and 1860s. It simultaneously
considers how those who considered themselves, or were
considered by others, as “Egyptians” or “Gypsies” navigated life
in the new realities created by such laws. Despite the limitations
of state-produced sources from each era under study, inferences
about these people’s experiences remain significant to building
a more accurate and inclusive history of the United States. The
following history narrates the lives of Joan Scott, her descendants,
and other nineteenth-century Americans influenced by legal
racial categories related to “Egyptians” and “Gypsies.” This is
interwoven with the relevant historical contexts from American
legal discourses that confirm the racialization of such categories
over the centuries.
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Education About Asia, 2020
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American Music , 2019
An examination of both the actual and the imagined musically inclined
Mississippi River boatmen, ... more An examination of both the actual and the imagined musically inclined
Mississippi River boatmen, as documented in firsthand recollections
and the associated popular culture versions, reveals a nation struggling
to come to terms with ethnic, racial, and regional diversity within the
context of a rapidly changing world.
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The American Historian, 2019
During the earliest decades of the nation, virtually everyone heard, made, and moved to music. In... more During the earliest decades of the nation, virtually everyone heard, made, and moved to music. In an age before broadly accessible commercial entertainment, where one’s routine labors begged for distracting relief, song and dance enlivened life’s tedium. Music filled an important social niche in the publically lived do-it-yourself world of early America. During an era before recording devices, the ephemeral life of sound resonated solely around those who made it. Early American music constructed a momentary community of listeners who could create or transcend the young nation’s refashioning social order. his essay treats some of the particular music making activities of Native Americans, the enslaved, new immigrants, and American-born United States citizens. Interwoven with an exploration of some of the sounds made by these groups of people, it considers the ways music contributed to their religious, festive, political, and artistic activities. Early Americans made music in multiple sites and for diverse ends. Our recognition of its significance to them opens new avenues of historical discovery.
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Maryland Historical Magazine, 2018
An examination into the lives of Joseph, William, and John Smith broadens our understanding of th... more An examination into the lives of Joseph, William, and John Smith broadens our understanding of the colonial Chesapeake while deepening our knowledge of Gypsy history. Doing so allows Gypsies to be written into the historical narrative as discrete actors, rather than mythologized into a timeless landscape. It also provides a fuller picture of the population living in the late colonial Chesapeake. Though sources about these men are scant, contextualizing their experiences reveals their lives and decisions as convict servants to have been fairly typical for the time and place. However, a deeper reading of their runaway advertisement suggests that the local population must have had plenty of experience with either real or imagined Gypsies to have created their own assumptions of what it meant to be Gypsy.
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Journal of Gypsy Studies , 2017
Though many scholars have referenced Joan Scott as the earliest Gypsy in North America, thanks to... more Though many scholars have referenced Joan Scott as the earliest Gypsy in North America, thanks to a 1695 Henrico County Virginia court record identifying her as "an Egiptian and noe Xtian woman," none have explored her life further. Despite this, an examination of the fornication charge against Scott suggests much about her life. Scott entered the colony twenty years before her fornication charge and while unmarried bore a child whose father the court considered a man of color. In these ways, Scott's life appears similar to her contemporaries. Yet, in other ways Scott's experience differed. By allowing the court to believe in her Gypsy identity and non-Christian religion she worked the court in her favor and saw her case dismissed. When historicized and contextualized, the meager details known about Joan Scott enhance our understanding of the colonial American Gypsy experience and contribute to a broader American historical narrative.
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Wisconsin Magazine of History, 2005
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The Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 2004
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Books by Ann Ostendorf
Sounds American provides new perspectives on the relationship between nationalism and cultural pr... more Sounds American provides new perspectives on the relationship between nationalism and cultural production by examining how Americans grappled with musical diversity in the early national and antebellum eras.
During this period a resounding call to create a distinctively American music culture emerged as a way to bind together the varied, changing, and uncertain components of the new nation. This played out with particular intensity in the lower Mississippi River valley, and New Orleans especially. Ann Ostendorf argues that this region, often considered an exception to the nation―with its distance from the center of power, its non-British colonial past, and its varied population―actually shared characteristics of many other places eventually incorporated into the country, thus making it a useful case study for the creation of American culture.
Ostendorf conjures the territory’s phenomenally diverse “music ways” including grand operas and balls, performances by church choirs and militia bands, and itinerant violin instructors. Music was often associated with “foreigners,” in particular Germans, French, Irish, and Africans. For these outsiders, music helped preserve collective identity. But for critics concerned with developing a national culture, this multitude of influences presented a dilemma that led to an obsessive categorization of music with racial, ethnic, or national markers. Ultimately, the shared experience of categorizing difference and consuming this music became a unifying national phenomenon. Experiencing the unknown became a shared part of the American experience.
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Unpublished Papers by Ann Ostendorf
In 1720, when thirteen deported French Bohemian families disembarked in the floundering Louisiana... more In 1720, when thirteen deported French Bohemian families disembarked in the floundering Louisiana colony, their futures appeared bleak. The culmination of one hundred years of French anti-Bohemian sentiment coincided with a growing French Empire in need of able-bodied and reproductive laborers to dislocate these families from their already precarious lives. Over the course of the following three generations, as the colony increasingly developed along imperially dictated, if locally interpreted, racialized lines, they lost the distinctive marker of a Bohemian identity. Most who could positioned themselves into the advantageous category of whiteness. Other Bohemians responded by joining together and building community to manage such challenging circumstances. Those who built and retained close social ties together preserved a Bohemian identity much longer. Their residential, sacramental, and marriage choices suggest a cohesive sense of a Bohemian identity continuing temporarily in the Louisiana colony. Others, however, made different choices. The several Bohemian women who partnered with men across the developing color lines were most consistently and emphatically tagged with the Bohemian marker. These women’s sexual choices rebuffed administrative attempts to segregate by continental heritage, revealing a perception of Bohemian racial liminality that only gradually disappeared. These Bohemian women’s distinctive sexual choices are revealing of both Bohemian social position and of developing racial categorization with phenotypic associations. The changing criteria of marking racial hierarchies, the growing benefits of conforming into whiteness, and the relegation of mixed race children outside this increasingly privileged category led to the eventual loss of a distinctive Bohemian community in Louisiana, although not their erasure from local memory.
The nuances of this process, considered through the social and sexual choices made by individuals labeled as “Bohemian” in diverse colonial records, reveal how despite the French and Spanish states’ attempt to control the colonial social order, individuals structured empire through their willingness to engage with categories of identity on their own terms. This first scholarly treatment of this colonial Louisiana cohort adds to the scholarship on the diverse Gypsy/Roma populations in Europe and the Americas, the growth of the imperial state, the experiences of empire in colonial Louisiana, and constructions of race. It draws on studies of Gypsy/Roma history, the Atlantic diaspora, and gender and race in empire. Situated into these contexts, this case study shows how a journey across the Atlantic transformed dissident subjects into valuable colonists. Louisiana Bohemians both embedded themselves into and shaped a French colonial society being organized around new racial designs.
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This article situates the historical “Egyptian,” more commonly referred to as “Gypsy,” into the i... more This article situates the historical “Egyptian,” more commonly referred to as “Gypsy,” into the increasingly racist legal structures formed in the British North American colonies and the early United States, between the 1690s and 1860s. It simultaneously considers how those who considered themselves, or were considered by others, as “Egyptians” or “Gypsies” navigated life in the new realities created by such laws. Despite the limitations of state-produced sources from each era under study, inferences about these people’s experiences remain significant to building a more accurate and inclusive history of the United States. The following history narrates the lives of Joan Scott, her descendants, and other nineteenth-century Americans influenced by legal racial categories related to “Egyptians” and “Gypsies.” This is interwoven with the relevant historical contexts from American legal discourses that confirm the racialization of such categories over the centuries.
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Articles by Ann Ostendorf
referred to as “Gypsy,” into the increasingly racist legal structures
formed in the British North American colonies and the early
United States, between the 1690s and 1860s. It simultaneously
considers how those who considered themselves, or were
considered by others, as “Egyptians” or “Gypsies” navigated life
in the new realities created by such laws. Despite the limitations
of state-produced sources from each era under study, inferences
about these people’s experiences remain significant to building
a more accurate and inclusive history of the United States. The
following history narrates the lives of Joan Scott, her descendants,
and other nineteenth-century Americans influenced by legal
racial categories related to “Egyptians” and “Gypsies.” This is
interwoven with the relevant historical contexts from American
legal discourses that confirm the racialization of such categories
over the centuries.
Mississippi River boatmen, as documented in firsthand recollections
and the associated popular culture versions, reveals a nation struggling
to come to terms with ethnic, racial, and regional diversity within the
context of a rapidly changing world.
Books by Ann Ostendorf
During this period a resounding call to create a distinctively American music culture emerged as a way to bind together the varied, changing, and uncertain components of the new nation. This played out with particular intensity in the lower Mississippi River valley, and New Orleans especially. Ann Ostendorf argues that this region, often considered an exception to the nation―with its distance from the center of power, its non-British colonial past, and its varied population―actually shared characteristics of many other places eventually incorporated into the country, thus making it a useful case study for the creation of American culture.
Ostendorf conjures the territory’s phenomenally diverse “music ways” including grand operas and balls, performances by church choirs and militia bands, and itinerant violin instructors. Music was often associated with “foreigners,” in particular Germans, French, Irish, and Africans. For these outsiders, music helped preserve collective identity. But for critics concerned with developing a national culture, this multitude of influences presented a dilemma that led to an obsessive categorization of music with racial, ethnic, or national markers. Ultimately, the shared experience of categorizing difference and consuming this music became a unifying national phenomenon. Experiencing the unknown became a shared part of the American experience.
Unpublished Papers by Ann Ostendorf
The nuances of this process, considered through the social and sexual choices made by individuals labeled as “Bohemian” in diverse colonial records, reveal how despite the French and Spanish states’ attempt to control the colonial social order, individuals structured empire through their willingness to engage with categories of identity on their own terms. This first scholarly treatment of this colonial Louisiana cohort adds to the scholarship on the diverse Gypsy/Roma populations in Europe and the Americas, the growth of the imperial state, the experiences of empire in colonial Louisiana, and constructions of race. It draws on studies of Gypsy/Roma history, the Atlantic diaspora, and gender and race in empire. Situated into these contexts, this case study shows how a journey across the Atlantic transformed dissident subjects into valuable colonists. Louisiana Bohemians both embedded themselves into and shaped a French colonial society being organized around new racial designs.
referred to as “Gypsy,” into the increasingly racist legal structures
formed in the British North American colonies and the early
United States, between the 1690s and 1860s. It simultaneously
considers how those who considered themselves, or were
considered by others, as “Egyptians” or “Gypsies” navigated life
in the new realities created by such laws. Despite the limitations
of state-produced sources from each era under study, inferences
about these people’s experiences remain significant to building
a more accurate and inclusive history of the United States. The
following history narrates the lives of Joan Scott, her descendants,
and other nineteenth-century Americans influenced by legal
racial categories related to “Egyptians” and “Gypsies.” This is
interwoven with the relevant historical contexts from American
legal discourses that confirm the racialization of such categories
over the centuries.
Mississippi River boatmen, as documented in firsthand recollections
and the associated popular culture versions, reveals a nation struggling
to come to terms with ethnic, racial, and regional diversity within the
context of a rapidly changing world.
During this period a resounding call to create a distinctively American music culture emerged as a way to bind together the varied, changing, and uncertain components of the new nation. This played out with particular intensity in the lower Mississippi River valley, and New Orleans especially. Ann Ostendorf argues that this region, often considered an exception to the nation―with its distance from the center of power, its non-British colonial past, and its varied population―actually shared characteristics of many other places eventually incorporated into the country, thus making it a useful case study for the creation of American culture.
Ostendorf conjures the territory’s phenomenally diverse “music ways” including grand operas and balls, performances by church choirs and militia bands, and itinerant violin instructors. Music was often associated with “foreigners,” in particular Germans, French, Irish, and Africans. For these outsiders, music helped preserve collective identity. But for critics concerned with developing a national culture, this multitude of influences presented a dilemma that led to an obsessive categorization of music with racial, ethnic, or national markers. Ultimately, the shared experience of categorizing difference and consuming this music became a unifying national phenomenon. Experiencing the unknown became a shared part of the American experience.
The nuances of this process, considered through the social and sexual choices made by individuals labeled as “Bohemian” in diverse colonial records, reveal how despite the French and Spanish states’ attempt to control the colonial social order, individuals structured empire through their willingness to engage with categories of identity on their own terms. This first scholarly treatment of this colonial Louisiana cohort adds to the scholarship on the diverse Gypsy/Roma populations in Europe and the Americas, the growth of the imperial state, the experiences of empire in colonial Louisiana, and constructions of race. It draws on studies of Gypsy/Roma history, the Atlantic diaspora, and gender and race in empire. Situated into these contexts, this case study shows how a journey across the Atlantic transformed dissident subjects into valuable colonists. Louisiana Bohemians both embedded themselves into and shaped a French colonial society being organized around new racial designs.