Enslaved Women and the Duality of Feeding in Monticello and the US South

A virtual fellow's forum with Emily West, Professor of American History at the University of Reading (UK) and Chair of British American Nineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH) from July 26, 2022.

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About the presentation

Emily West seeks to integrate histories of slavery traditionally relegated to the realms of the “domestic” into wider narratives about the development of American capitalism using the lens of enslaved women's feeding of other enslaved people over the course of their life-cycles, from infancy to adulthood. West uncovers the duality of enslaved women’s feeding as a form of gendered exploitation -- but also a means of finding pleasure, of nurturing, and empowerment. The processes by which food is produced, distributed, prepared, and consumed are vital to understanding manifestations of power and resistance, particularly in regimes characterised by exploitation and conflict such as U.S. slavery. Profit-seeking enslavers sought to feed people enough to work and (for women) to reproduce at minimal cost and they ensured efficiencies in feeding regimes by dictating that food be prepared and eaten communally rather than within individual family units. This brought enslavers into direct conflict with enslaved women who desired to feed their families and others on their own terms and used their feeding responsibility to resist the regime.  

Watch the presentation here. 

About the speaker

Emily West is a Professor of American History at the University of Reading in the UK and Chair of British American Nineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH). She has published on the relationships between enslaved couples in the U.S. South and the lives of enslaved women, especially mothers and enslaved women forced to wet nurse in the antebellum era.