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Project description
Part I.
1. Women played a crucial role in the market economy in Africa and in the slave trade on the African continent. Based upon the essays in the Robertson and Klein anthology discuss what impact their involvement made. Cite specific examples—nature of slavery– gender, family, political impact, ethnicity, and the economic consequences. Finally, what, if anything, were the implications for slavery and their roles in the Americas?
The essays in the Robertson and Klein Anthology follow:
Herbert Klein, “African Women in the Atlantic Slave Trade,” 29-38
Susan Herlin Broadhead, “Slave Wives, Free Sisters: Bakongo Women and Slavery c. 1700-1850,” 160-184.
Curtis Keim, “Women in Slavery among the Mangbetuc. 1800-1910,” 144-159.
Bruce Mouser, “Women Slavers of Guinea-Conakry,” 320-339.
Part II.
1. Discuss the scholarship on slavery, pointing out the major shifts that scholars made from the 1919 UB Phillips American Negro Slavery to the 1979 Slave Community of John Blassingame. Deborah Gray White’s Ar’n’t I a Woman describes African American women as “matter out of place.” Discuss what impact gender had on the evolving literature of slavery and our understanding of it.
Part III.
Based upon the lives of the slave women listed below discuss their legal status and the implications for self-actualization or self-determination for the women and their people. Be sure to discuss the impact of region/nation and politics. Or to paraphrase the artist, what does gender have to do with it?