“The Measure of their Sadness:” Slavery, Kinship, and the Marketplace in the Early Modern Black Atlantic

A lecture by Jennifer L. Morgan, Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis & History at New York University.

In "The Measure of their Sadness," Morgan explores the intersection between racialization, trade, and affect in the early decades of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Through a methodological intervention in which the lives of enslaved African women are set alongside the structures of trade and value in which they were entrapped, Morgan explores the origins of race and racial ideology and suggests that kinship and the marketplace comprised the inextricable origins of hereditary racial slavery.

All are welcome!

Bio

Jennifer L. Morgan is Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis & History at New York University. She has published on the history of women, reproduction and slavery in the Black Atlantic, illuminating the importance of reproductive policies for enslaved woman in the Americas.