Episode Summary
In this episode, we investigate how historians research history by exploring the experiences of 17th- and 18th-century enslaved African and African American women. Our guide for this exploration is Jennifer L. Morgan, a Professor of History and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University.
During our conversation, Jennifer reveals information about the daily lives of enslaved African and African American women; How women’s reproductive capabilities both impacted early American slavery and the way African and African American women experienced slavery; And, how she researches and recovers the lives and experiences of enslaved women.
What You’ll Discover
- The daily lives of enslaved African and African American women in early America
- Differences between the experiences of enslaved men and women
- The impact slavery had on early American women’s lives
- Whether slave owners tried to control the reproductive capabilities of female slaves
- How women impacted the development of slavery
- How Europeans used the bodies of women to mark the boundaries of African and European societies
- How Jennifer started her research for Laboring Women
- Jennifer’s research process and how it has matured
- The role historical questions play in historians’ research
- How historians form historical questions
- How Jennifer chooses archives for her research
- How historians use the internet to research their topics
- How Jennifer researches enslaved women
- How enslaved women experienced motherhood
- The role of objectivity in historians’ research
- How Jennifer handles researching and teaching the emotional and violent topic of slavery
- How being interdisciplinary helps Jennifer think about and find information
- Jennifer’s tips for selecting archives and conducting research
Links to People, Places, and Publications
- Jennifer Morgan
- Jennifer’s NYU webpage
- Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery
- Jennifer’s article, “‘Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder’: Male Travelers, Female Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Ideology, 1500-1770”
- The National Archives of Great Britain
- Bodleian Library
- Early English Books Online
- The University of the West Indies, Mona
- The Jamaican National Archives
- The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself
- Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
- Episode 64: Brett Rushforth, Native American Slavery in New France