2013 Book Award Winner from the International Research Society in Childrens Literature 2012 Outstanding Book Award Winner from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education 2012 Winner of the Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize presented by the New England American Studies Association 2012 RunnerUp, John Hope Franklin Publication Prize presented by the American Studies Association 2012 Honorable Mention, Distinguished Book Award presented by the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series Beginning in the mid nineteenth century in America, childhood became synonymous with innocencea reversal of the previouslydominant Calvinist belief that children were depraved, sinful creatures. As the idea of childhood innocence took hold, it became racialized popular culture constructed white children as innocent and vulnerable while excluding black youth from these qualities. Actors, writers, and visual artists then began pairing white children with African American adults and children, thus transferring the quality of innocence to a variety of racialpolitical projectsa dynamic that Robin Bernstein calls racial innocence. This phenomenon informed racial formation from the mid nineteenth century through the early twentieth. Racial Innocencetakes up a rich archive including books, toys, theatrical props, and domestic knickknacks which Bernstein analyzes as scriptive things that invite or prompt historicallylocated practices while allowing... | Robin Bernstein Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to