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About the Symposium

Drawing together scholars who are investigating the lives of enslaved women in Brazil, the United States, and the Caribbean, this research network pays particular attention to issues related to motherhood, the care of children, and childlessness. Scholars are invited to consider how enslaved motherhood worked similarly across Atlantic slave societies, to find out what the important differences were in different slave societies, to compare representations of enslaved motherhood in the arts, and to consider the best methodologies for investigating these issues. This network aims to draw out points of similarity and difference, and seeks to encourage new ways of thinking about enslaved women in the Atlantic world through the benefit of comparative perspectives.

This two-day symposium brings together historians of enslaved women researching motherhood, the care of children, and childlessness with other historians who have explored these issues within non-slave societies. To facilitate in-depth comparison, particular attention will be paid to the history of breastfeeding and wetnursing in slave and non-slave societies.

 

 

Acknowledgements

This international research network would not have been possible without financial support from AHRC. We are also extremely grateful to Newcastle University’s research centres and groups that have assisted with financial help to support this first symposium.

We would like to thank the AHRC and Newcastle University’s Postcolonial Research Group, the Centre for Latin American Studies, the Northern Centre for the History of Medicine, and the American Studies Research Group, as well as for having been awarded funds from the International Research Collaboration Award.