Contesting Thistlewood: slavery, agency and the limits of representation

This piece is a contribution to the exhibition catalogue of Barbadian / Canadian artist Joscelyn Gardner's exhibition, 'Bleeding & Breeding' curated by Olexander Wlasenko, January 14-February 12, 2012 in the Station Gallery, Whitby, Ontario, Canada. The piece examines the ways in which Gardner's Creole Portraits II (2007) and Creole Portraits III (2009) issue a provocative and carefully crafted contestation to the journals of the slave-owner and amateur botanist Thomas Thistlewood. It argues that while Thistlewood’s journals make raced and gendered bodies seemingly available to knowledge, incorporating them within the colonial archive as signs of subjection, Gardener’s portraits disrupt these acts of history and knowledge. Her artistic response marks a radical departure from the significant body of scholarship that has drawn on the Thistlewood journals to date. Creatively contesting his narratives’ dispossession of Creole female subjects and yet aware of the problems of innocent recovery, her works style representations that retain the consciousness and effect of historical erasure. Through an oxymoronic aesthetic that assembles a highly crafted verisimilitude alongside the condition of invisibility and brings atrocity into the orbit of the aesthetic, these portraits force us to question what stakes are involved in bringing the lives of the enslaved and violated back into regimes of representation.

'Between slavery and freedom': the expulsion and enslavement of free women of colour in the US South before the Civil War

For free black women in the pre-Civil War American South, the status offered by ‘freedom’ was uncertain and malleable. The conceptualization of bondage and freedom as two diametrically opposed conditions therefore fails to make sense of the complexities of life for these women. Instead, notions of enslavement and freedom are better framed as a spectrum. This article develops this idea by exploring two of the ways in which some black women negotiated their status before the law—namely though petitioning for residency or for enslavement. While these petitions are atypical numerically, and often offer tantalizingly scant evidence, when used in conjunction with evidence from the US census, it becomes clear that these women were highly pragmatic. Prioritizing their spousal and broader familial affective relationships above their legal status, they rejected the often theoretical distinction between slavery and liberation. As such, the petitions can be used to reach broader conclusions about the attitudes of women who have left little written testimony.

Liberdades possíveis em espaços periféricos: escravidão e alforria no termo da vila de Arez (séculos xviii e xix)

This paper discusses aspects of the slavery and emancipations in the village of Arez between the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century. It seeks to identify the profile of the slaves and the emancipation possibilities in a peripheral region with few commercial activities, given that the most of the approaches about manumission consider towns and cities where the economic dynamics ware more pronounced, as places of higher possibilities of slaves working in diverse activities that allowed them to accumulate a reserve fund and thus buy their freedom. Therefore it was necessary to raise evidences of slavery in the case study, which was based on surveys of the eighteenth century, and the first decades of the nineteenth century and some population maps and civil records related to the early nineteenth century. The information about the manumission acts were analyzed based on writs of freedom registered in the village of Arez between 1774 and 1827 due to the absence of other documents about it. The registry books include all the documents of the Arez community; so, it was possible to observe what happened in rural localities, in the town, in the headquarters of the district and in the village of Goianinha. Based on information from the documents, it was possible to address some aspects of slavery like the predominant types of groups, the possible activities in which slaves were inserted and the profile of the freed slaves, the emancipation modes and, therefore, discuss the possible relations ship between the colonial space and manumissions and between masters and slaves

O Testamento de Dona Balbina: um estudo de caso sobre escravidão e propriedade em Guarapuava (1851-1865)

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

As relações de trabalho e a resistência escrava em Sant'Ana de Paranaíba: província de Mato Grosso (1828- 1888)

Pós-graduação em História - FCLAS

Eliminating Modern Day Slavery

All too often, human trafficking victims – like victims of other crimes – are overlooked. When these victims are in need of support and resources, our governments are often underprepared and overburdened. As public servants, Congressman Ted Poe and State Senator Leticia Van de Putte recognize the deficiency in attention and resources dedicated to trafficked victims at both levels of government. Federal and state governments should provide the necessary resources for victims and victim service providers and help facilitate restitution for trafficking victims. In addition, the federal and state governments should help raise awareness of this crime’s impact on our nation. The problem of human trafficking cannot be dealt with at only one level of government. It will take the cooperation of all relevant local, state, and federal government entities to truly make an impact in combating human trafficking in the United States. We will continue to be a voice in Washington and in the State of Texas for victims and victim advocates to provide the needed resources for victims around the country and to draw attention to growing concerns surrounding human trafficking.