Blackening the Louvre Museum: Beyoncé, Jay Z, and the Legacies of Slavery
The video of the song Apes**t by Beyoncé and Jay Z revives the conversation about slavery and its legacies. The song is part of the couple’s new joint album as…
The Value of Enslaved Bodies: A Short Review of The Price for the Their Pound of Flesh
Women History Month is still here and I avidly read during the weekend the new book The Price for the Their Pound of Flesh by historian Daina Ramey Berry. It is…
Slave by Another Name ? Or How Evil is to Use the Term “Slave”
For long time now we have had this discussion on the use of the word “slave” and “enslaved” to refer to men, women, and children who had the legal status…
The problem of using the term “mistress” to refer to enslaved women
The issue regarding the status of enslaved women as “mistresses” is generating discussion on social media, this time because of a tweet by a Washington Post‘s journalist Krissah Thompson on her…
Meet Ona Judge: Never Caught by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
The last time I wrote a post here was almost one year ago. As February 2017 comes to an end, and I have been reading so many great books published…
Memory as a Response to the Problem of Slavery
This text is based on my intervention in the final roundtable of the 2015 Gilder Lehman International Conference held at Yale University, on October 30-31, 2015. I thank David Blight and…
Memory and Slavery: Chico Rei, An “African King” in Brazil
Memorializing slavery and making slavery part of official initiatives remains a problem in a country like Brazil, where slavery was outlawed only in 1888. Obstacles prevent this painful past to…
An “Evil” West African King and the Atlantic Slave Trade
The classic comment stating that “Africans sold Africans” during the Atlantic slave trade is very common in online forums or classroom discussions. Commentators who bring this argument, in order to downplay the magnitude of…
Slavery as Caricature
This article is based on my newest book Brazil Through French Eyes: A Nineteenth-Century Artist in in the Tropics published by University of New Mexico Press (2015). French artist…
Slavery in the Colonial North and the Philipsburg Manor
In the last two decades scholars made significant efforts to emphasize the existence of slavery in the US north. Despite these efforts and because scholarship takes time to reach the…