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…
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…
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…
The Ark of Return: UN Slavery Memorial to be Unveiled Today in New York City
Today, March 25, 2015, is the United Nations International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, whose theme this year is Women and Slavery. As a…
In slavery matters, numbers are still relevant
Numbers are not everything, but in the case of the Atlantic slave trade they reveal the importance of the institution of slavery and the size of populations of African descent…
A New “Slavery” Museum in the United States ?
In a famous interview of 1989, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison pointed out that her book Beloved (1987) was a site of memory of slavery as sites of the slave…
Beyond Freedom’s Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery by Adam Rothman
Adam Rothman’s new book Beyond Freedom’s Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery (Harvard University Press, 2015) brings to light the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children on…
12 Years a Slave and the Problem of Depicting Human Atrocities
The problem of portraying extreme violence is part of scholarly and public debates since the end of the Second World War. After the Holocaust, whereas some scholars considered fiction an…