Heat, sex, and sugar: pregnancy and childbearing in the slave quarters

This article examines the dynamics of slave fecundity in the antebellum South and analyzes the relationship between the planters' labor requirements and pregnancy on large sugar estates in nineteenth-century Louisiana. In contrast to the cotton states, where the slave population grew, bondspeople in Louisiana's sugar world experienced natural population decrease. This derived in part from imbalanced sex ratios, but as this article explores, it also occurred because of the punishing nature of sugar production that taxed slave women in distinct ways over the entire year. As this article shows, conceptions peaked during the annual harvest season but collapsed at other times because of nutritional stress, overwork, heat, and exhaustion. Addressing the seasonality of slave childbirths, the article posits that workload combined with climatic, ecological, hormonal, nutritional, and lactation factors ultimately shaped the reproductive ecology of American slavery.     

Home-grown slaves: women, reproduction, and the abolition of the slave trade, Jamaica 1788-1807

Once the British transatlantic slave trade came under abolitionists' scrutiny in 1788, West Indian slaveholders had to consider alternative methods of obtaining well-needed laborers. This article examines changes in enslaved women's working lives as planters sought to increase birth rates to replenish declining laboring populations. By focusing more on variances in work assignment and degrees of punishment rather than their absence, this article establishes that enslaved women in Jamaica experienced a considerable shift in their work responsibilities and their subjection to discipline as slaveholders sought to capitalize on their abilities to reproduce. Enslaved women's reproductive capabilities were pivotal for slavery and the plantation economy's survival once legal supplies from Africa were discontinued.     

"Showplace of the Cherokee Nation": race and the making of a southern house museum

This article traces the restoration history of the Chief Vann House State Historic Site, a former Cherokee plantation owned and operated by the state of Georgia. The article explores the make-up of the restoration community in the 1950s and identifies aspects of convergence and divergence among this white, elite group in terms of both their visions for the site and their notions of how best to represent Indians. It argues that restorers used the restoration process as a route for personal and community identity enhancement, identifying with the storied Cherokee Indians and claiming "Indian" characteristics and the historical experience of Indian removal for themselves.     

Boundaries and opportunities: comparing slave family formation in the antebellum South

Our understanding of the marriage strategies and family formation of enslaved people remains clouded by disagreement among contemporary scholars. A perusal of the historical literature suggests that two issues lay at the root of this disagreement: First, scholars disagree over the extent to which slave family life was shaped by the external factors of slavery, or rather slave agency; and second, scholars appear reluctant to abandon their singular views of the slave family. This article addresses both of these gaps by formulating a middle ground in the slave agency debate and by redefining the slave family in plural form. An analysis of the boundaries and opportunities for family formation in northern Virginia and lowcountry South Carolina, this study shows that while the establishment of co-residential two-parent households was the ideal for slaves, not all were able to realize that ideal, and those that could not adapted their marriage strategies and family lives accordingly.     

尼玛扎巴:“医德的最高境界是心善”

三月末的一个清晨,一场纷纷扬扬的夜雪过后,拉萨周边的山都白了头,灿烂的阳光也掩不住春寒料峭的清冷。由于波及全国的疫情尚未解除,街上的行人显得稀稀落落,就连往常热闹的八廓商城也没了鼎沸的嘈杂声,我和帮我做翻译的朋友其美如约来到这里,探访西藏德民藏医门诊部的医生尼玛扎巴。