Participant Info
- First Name
- Emily
- Last Name
- West
- Country
- United Kingdom
- State
- e.r.west@reading.ac.uk
- Affiliation
- University of Reading
- Website URL
- http://www.reading.ac.uk/history/about/staff/e-r-west.aspx
- Keywords
- Slavery, gender, women, family, motherhood, marriage, US South, antebellum era
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- PhD
- PhD
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
I am broadly interested in issues of race and gender in American history and my research focusses on US slavery in the US South, especially the lives of enslaved women, the relationships between enslaved spouses, family under slavery, and affective ties between enslaved people and free people of color. More recently, I have published on enslaved wetnursing and sexual violence under slavery. I have been Co-I on an AHRC-funded network exploring enslaved women’s motherhood across the Atlantic world.
- Recent Publications
2018
- West, E. (2018) Reflections on the ‘History and Historians’ of the black woman’s role in the community of slaves: enslaved women and intimate partner sexual violence. American Nineteenth Century History, 19 (1). pp. 1-22. ISSN 1466-4658 doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2018.1429333
2017
- West, E. and Shearer, E. (2017) Fertility control, shared nurturing, and dual exploitation: the lives of enslaved mothers in the antebellum United States. Women’s History Review. ISSN 1747-583X doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2017.1336849
- Cowling, C., Machado, M. H. P. T., Paton, D. and West, E., eds. (2017) Mothering slaves: motherhood, childlessness and the care of children in Atlantic slave societies. Women’s History Review (special issue). Taylor and Francis. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2017.1336832
- Cowling, C., Machado, M. H. P. T., Paton, D. and West, E., eds. (2017) Mothering slaves: comparative perspectives on motherhood, childlessness, and the care of children in Atlantic slave societies. Slavery & Abolition (special issue), 38 (2). Routledge, pp. 223-231. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2017.1316959
- West, E. and Knight, R. J. (2017) Mothers’ milk: slavery, wet-nursing, and black and white women in the Antebellum South. Journal of Southern History, 83 (1). pp. 37-68. ISSN 0022-4642 doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2017.0001
2014
- West, E. (2014) Enslaved women in America: from colonial times to emancipation. African American History Series. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, USA, pp160. ISBN 9781442208711
- Media Coverage
- Social Media
- @emilywestfahey
- Country Focus
- United States
- Expertise by Geography
- North America, United States
- Expertise by Chronology
- 19th century
- Expertise by Topic
- Family, Gender, Sexual Violence, Slavery, Women
