AM420: Sign-up sheet for weekly seminar presentations
Term One:
Week One: Groundings: Atlantic slavery in comparative perspective
 Why study Atlantic slavery in comparative perspective?
 Do you see significant differences/ similarities between the kinds of slave regimes
established across space and time in the Americas?
 How can we best periodise the rise and fall of Atlantic slavery?
No presenter
Week Two: Geographies and terminologies of slavery in the Atlantic World
 What is the rationale for taking Brazil, Cuba and the US south as case studies?
 Is studying movement, place, and space helpful in understanding the dynamics of
Atlantic slavery and emancipation? In what ways?
 What do we mean by terms like “Atlantic World,” “diaspora,” “second slavery”?
What are their histories?
No presenter
Week Three: The Atlantic Slave Trade: Demography and Geography
 Who / what shaped the volume and nature of the transatlantic slave trade?
 How did it change over time and space?
Presenter(s): Philly
Week Four: The Atlantic Slave Trade: Experience and Agency
 What was the trade like for those who experienced it?
 How did it change over time?
 Whose agency influenced the trade, and why?
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Presenter(s):
Week Five: The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade: The Role of Britain
 Why did Britain eventually abolish the trade in 1807?
 What were the effects in the United States?
 What was the effect on Brazil and Cuba?
Presenter(s): Holly
Week Six: Reading Week: no class
Week Seven: Abolition of the Slave Trade: Brazil
 Why was the Brazilian slave trade abolished in 1850?
 What were the consequences for Brazilian slave society?
Presenter(s):
Week Eight: Slave Trading to Cuba
 Why were British attempts to prevent slave trading in Cuba so ineffective?
 What were the consequences for slave society in Cuba?
Presenter(s): Michael Pieri
Week Nine: No class (these hours are made up later in the year)
Week Ten: Internal and Regional Slave Trades 1: The United States South
[NOTE: this class will be RESCHEDULED from Monday for Weds, Thurs or Fri
of week 10]
 When and why did the internal slave trade develop?
 What were the consequences for the enslaved, and with what success did they
resist?
 What were the economic and political implications of the internal trade?
Presenter(s):
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Term Two:
Week One: Internal and Regional Slave Trades 2: Brazil
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Why and when did the internal slave trade develop?
Who and what drove it?
What were the political and economic consequences?
In what other ways was the movement of the enslaved controlled?
How did the enslaved resist control of their geographical movements?
Presenter(s): Henry
Week Two: Internal and Regional Slave Trades 3: Cuba
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Why and when did an internal slave trade within Cuba develop?
Is “trade” an appropriate term to describe the forced movements of the enslaved?
Who and what drove it?
How did enslaved people seek to resist it?
What were its political and economic consequences?
Did non-slave people have the right to move around freely in colonial Cuba?
Presenter(s):
Week Three: Cultures and societies in the diaspora
 Did the Middle Passage represent cultural change or cultural continuity for
enslaved Africans and their New World descendants?
 Is the notion of “diaspora” useful?
 How did human movement and mobility shape cultural developments in the
diaspora?
Presenter(s): Chinwe
Week Four: The Yoruba in West Africa, Brazil, and Cuba
 Why did the Yoruba seem to become so dominant among slave culture in Cuba
and Brazil in the nineteenth century?
 What were the implications for slave resistance?
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Presenter(s): Rashanne
Week Five: Gender and slavery in comparative perspective
 To what extent, and with what implications, was New World slavery a gendered
phenomenon?
 How did different cultural notions of gender roles combine within the lives of
enslaved and freed people?
Week Six: Reading Week (no class)
Week Seven: Gender and manumission in “Iberian” slave societies
 Why were so many women manumitted in Brazil, Cuba, and other “Iberian” slave
societies? Was women’s high manumission rate limited to these societies?
 Was the pursuit of manumission “resistance”, “accommodation,” or neither?
Presenter(s): Amy Mackrill
Week Eight: Geographies of “resistance”: The revolutionary Atlantic
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How, and with what consequences, did the enslaved resist slavery?
What do we mean by “resistance”? Is it a gendered term?
Is the distinction between “African” and “creole” slave rebellions useful?
What were the effects of the Haitian Revolution across the Atlantic World?
Presenter(s): Michael Pieri
Week Nine: Slave Rebellions in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States
 What were the causes and consequences of slave rebellions?
 Who participated? Why?
 How did they differ across these three case studies?
Presenter(s): Ashley
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Week Ten: Abolition of Slavery in Brazil
 Why was slavery abolished in Brazil?
 Who contributed?
 What was the role of human movement and mobility?
Presenter(s):
Term 3:
Week One: Abolition of Slavery in Cuba
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Why was slavery abolished in Cuba?
Who contributed?
What impact did Cuba’s colonial status have?
What was the role of human movement and mobility?
Presenter(s):
Week Two: Post-emancipation society and the “meanings of freedom”:
 How much changed for former slaves with abolition?
 How did former slaves seek to negotiate the “meanings of freedom”?
 Were abolition and the construction of post-emancipation society gendered
processes?
 Did movement and mobility play a role?
Presenter(s):
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