Good afternoon everyone,
We are excited to announce the WGSS reading group discussion for this Fall semester!
We will be holding a reading group via Zoom on Friday, November 4th at 1:30pm to discuss a chapter from Sasha Turner’s Contested Bodies. Sasha Turner is a Jamaican American historian, working as an Associate Professor of History in the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Contested Bodies argues that the reproduction of enslaved individuals was a key battleground in abolitionists’ campaign to persuade British Parliament to end the slave trade. For this reading group, we will be reading Chapter six, “Mother Knows Best? Maternal Authority and Children’s Survival.” This chapter delves into enslaved women’s struggle for autonomy and authority regarding childbearing and raising, marking motherhood itself as a site of resistance to slavery.
The chapter is attached to this announcement and you can register for the Zoom here.
We are also hoping to add more people across different departments with an interest in WGSS to our group, so please free to pass this message on to any colleagues who might be interested. If you are already a member of our Canvas group, please also feel free to invite others who are interested in joining.
We thank you in advance for your interest and look forward to a thoughtful discussion!
Sincerely,
Kiri and Megan
Kiri Raber
Doctoral Candidate
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Department of History
Florida State University
kraber@fsu.edu
Megan Groninger
Doctoral Candidate
Graduate Teaching Assistant
History Department
Florida State University
mgroninger@fsu.edu