LibGuides: Basics of Genealogy: Critical Family History

Critical Family History

Having access to written records or any records comes with having privilege. These resources and readings will help expand your thoughts beyond names and dates, and give you ideas to think about as you do your research. While genealogy necessarily focuses on indviduals and individual families, keep in mind that your family existed in a particular physical place at a particular moment in time.

"As you map out your individual family, start asking questions about the context of their lives. As you look into how they were situated within a class system, a racial structure, and a gender structure, then ask how that knowledge might enable you to understand yourself, and how it might help you see how unjust relationships formed and can be transformed, then you are doing critical family history." - Christine Sleeter

Christine Sleeter's blog

Genealogy and Anti-Racism: A Resource for White People

Genealogy and Anti-Racism: A Resource for White People
This guide was created by the author to challenge traditional notions of genealogy and asks “How can we positively shape what we hand down to the next generation?”

Articles

There Has Been No Remorse Over It: A Narrative Inquiry Exploring Enslaved Ancestral Roots through a Critical Family History Project
This article unpacks how one student came to see herself and others from a deeper perspective, particularly through the lens of someone who chose to continue digging into her enslaved ancestors’ roots. A unique aspect of this paper is that it gives voice to a former student in the class, which provides a way of seeing the complexities and dehumanizing components of the lives of enslaved Africans in the U.S.—often sanitized out of history books.
Their American Dream
Using the tools of genealogy, [their] parents, Lem and Mae’s, pursuit of their American Dream. Such exploration digs deep to decipher the nexuses of a family’s evolution. Dr. Maya Angelou routinely shared stories about her past to impart the importance of embracing one’s history. For my parents, the American Dream meant opportunity, which included home ownership.