Boston Seminar on the History of Women and Gender

Thursday, February 13, 2014, at 5:30 p.m.
Location: Schlesinger Library, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Gloria Whiting, Harvard University
“How can the wife submit?” African Families Negotiate Gender and Slavery in New England
Comment: Barbara Krauthamer, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

This paper discusses various ways in which the everyday realities of slavery shaped gender relations in Afro-New England families. While the structure of slave families in the region was unusually matrifocal, these families nonetheless exhibited a number of patriarchal tendencies. Enslaved African families in New England therefore complicate the assumption of much scholarship that the structure of slave families defined their normative values.

Please RSVP if you plan to attend. To respond, email seminars@masshist.org or phone 617-646-0568. As usual, there will be four programs in this series, two each at the Schlesinger Library and the Massachusetts Historical Society. The complete schedule is available at http://www.masshist.org/2012/calendar/seminars/women-and-gender.

Each seminar consists of a discussion of a pre-circulated paper provided to subscribers. (Papers will be available at the event for those who choose not to subscribe.) Afterwards the host institution will provide a light buffet supper. As in the past, the essays will be madeavailable to subscribers as .pdfs through the seminar’s webpage, http://www.masshist.org/2012/calendar/seminars/women-and-gender. Subscribe to the 2013-2014 series via this page to receive the full series of papers.

Re-posted from the H-WOMEN listserv.