Fellows’ Forum - Enslaved Women's Violence and a Feminist History of Harm: A New Direction in Slavery Studies?

The 2020s has witnessed a surge in studies exploring the subject of enslaved women’s violent resistance in the United States slaveholding South. Female perpetrated violence, however, remains a contested area of “unsettling” knowledge throughout various academic disciplines, which, as some feminist scholars argue, continue to produce “safe” histories. Applying a 'feminist history of harm' as a conceptual tool with an intersectional focus to study the past and harmful actions of women, allows scholars to consider how enslaved women in the US South were victims and agents of violence in their combat against the intersectional oppressions inherent under racial bondage. Branded as ‘ugly feminism’ and a ‘feminist taboo’, this talk considers how this emerging feminist theory can create new interpretations of violence and gender under slavery to reconceptualise historical perspectives concerning enslaved women’s resistance in the antebellum South.