Newcastle University

     We aim to frame a set of research questions within our approach to the overarching question:  ‘how similar was the experience of motherhood, the care of children, and childlessness across Atlantic slave societies, and what were the important differences?’
    

     These questions include:

• How did enslaved women experience motherhood and the care of their own and others’ children?

• What practices and understandings of mothering did enslaved women bring with them from African societies? How and how much were these transformed in the New World?

• How did enslaved women’s experience of motherhood, the care of children, and childlessness differ from normative and dominant experiences of motherhood within slave societies, and with what implications?

• What were the social and political situations of enslaved women who did not become mothers?

• Did different slave societies employ enslaved wetnurses in different ways and if so why? How did this change over time?

• How much did women’s experience of mothering, the care of children, and childlessness change after the end of slavery?

• What was the role of abortion and infanticide in slave societies? Should these practices be considered together? To what extent did they take place, and how far can they be usefully considered a form of resistance’?

• How useful are paradigms that use concepts of resistance and trauma in understanding motherhood, childlessness, and the care of children? To what extent are these paradigms compatible or in conflict? What alternative paradigms might be employed?

• How have motherhood, childlessness, and the care of children in slave societies been represented in literature, visual and performing arts, and with what implications?

• What are the best methodologies for investigating motherhood, childlessness, the care of children, and the representation of these phenomena in slave societies?

     Through answering these questions, this network can demonstrate how studying enslaved motherhood is central to the history of slave societies and will shed light on the history of motherhood more broadly.