Sommerville, Diane Miller

(Diane Miller, Diane Sommerville, Diane M. Sommerville)

PERSONAL:

Daughter of Dean Myers and Donna Jean Miller; married Don Sommerville (a corporate executive); children: Shannon, Jackson. Education: University of North Carolina at Charlotte, graduate study; Rutgers University, Ph.D., 1995.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, Binghamton University, P.O. Box 6000, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000. E-mail—sommervi@binghamton.edu.

CAREER:

Affiliated with Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; Fairleigh Dickinson University College at Florham, Madison, NJ, began as assistant professor, became associate professor of history, 2005—, director of women's studies. State University of New York at Binghamton, visiting associate professor.

MEMBER:

Southern Association for Women Historians (member of A. Elizabeth Taylor Prize committee).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Louis Bevier graduate fellow, Rutgers University, 1993-94; Archie K. Davis research fellow, North Caroliniana Society, 1993; grant from American Historical Association, 1993; graduate dissertation fellow, Rutgers University, 1995; A. Elizabeth Taylor Prize, Southern Association for Women Historians, 1996; Fairleigh Dickinson University, Becton College Teacher of the Year, 2000-01, Maddy Award for Excellence, Becton College Teacher of the Year, 2001-02; Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South won the First Book Award, Phi Alpha Theta, and was named an outstanding academic title, Choice, both 2005; Virginia Historical Society fellow, 2005.

WRITINGS:

Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2004.

Contributor to books, including The Devil's Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, edited by Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie, Oxford University Press, 1997; Sex without Consent: Rape and Sexual Coercion in America, edited by Merril Smith, New York University Press, 2002; and Black Women in America, 2nd edition, edited by Darlene Clark Hine, Oxford University Press, 2005. Contributor to periodicals, including American Journal of Legal History, Journal of American History, Journal of Southern History, Journal of the Early Republic, Radical History Review, and Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.

SIDELIGHTS:

Diane Miller Sommerville's book Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South examines a number of widely held beliefs about rapes of white women by black men in the American South. Drawing on legal records of more than 250 rape cases dating to the Civil War era and before, primarily in North Carolina and Virginia, Sommerville shows that accused black men were not automatically assumed to be guilty, were usually tried fairly in court rather than lynched, and were sometimes even defended by slaveholders and other white men. "Her comprehensive study of trial and appellate rulings presents a more nuanced and ambiguous story than many would have anticipated," commented Julie Novkov in the Alabama Review. Novkov described the book as "fascinating and lively." Sommerville also ventures into the postwar period to show how the situation persisted, relying here on noncourt sources rather than trial records, a method some critics, such as H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online contributor Diane Mutti Burke, found problematic. Burke nonetheless held that "the strength of Sommerville's argument about the antebellum South outweighs any criticisms of her postbellum analysis." She concluded, "This ambitious and interesting book will force historians to rethink the roots of the rape myth and the solidarity of white southerners." In another H-Net Reviews critique, Elaine Frantz Parsons highlighted the author's "innovative research and bold argumentation." While Parsons claimed that "occasionally, she pushes her evidence too far," she termed this a minor point and maintained that Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South "is crucial reading for anyone interested in the culture of the nineteenth-century South." Michael J. Pfeifer in the Journal of the History of Sexuality expressed reservations about presenting North Carolina and Virginia data as representative of the entire South. He pointed out that lynching was much more prevalent in states such as Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and he suggested that "attention to factors of demography, history, economics, and culture would help the reader better understand the patterns of race, sexuality, and class that Sommerville finds." Calling Sommerville a "talented" historian, Pfeifer deemed "particularly valuable" the author's study of the courts' treatment of both free and slave black men during the period and remarked that the book "offers valuable analysis and will be read with avid interest by historians of the American South."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Alabama Review, October, 2005, Julie Novkov, review of Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South.

American Historical Review, June, 2006, William D. Carrigan, review of Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South, p. 847.

American Journal of Legal History, July, 2005, Christopher Waldrep, review of Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South, pp. 319-320.

Choice, July-August, 2005, J.D. Smith, review of Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South, p. 2052.

Civil War History, March, 2007, Stephanie Cole, review of Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South, pp. 67-69.

Journal of American History, December, 2005, Edward E. Baptist, review of Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South, p. 974.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, summer, 2007, Mary Block, review of Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South, p. 138.

Journal of Southern History, February, 2006, Estelle B. Freedman, review of Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South, p. 178.

Journal of the History of Sexuality, October, 2005, Michael J. Pfeifer, review of Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South, p. 479.

Reviews in American History, June, 2005, Jeanette Keith, "‘Cry Rape’: Race, Class, and the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South," pp. 191-196.

ONLINE

State University of New York at Binghampton Department of History Web site,http://www.binghamton.edu/ (September 22, 2008), faculty profile.

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online,http://www.h-net.org/ (May, 2006), Elaine Frantz Parsons, "Questioning the Myth of the Black Beast Rapist"; (November, 2007), Diane Mutti Burke, "Rape Myths on Trial."