Sexuality and slavery : reclaiming intimate histories in the Americas Editors Harris and Berry first conceived of this discussion one of the history and relationship between slavery and sexuality at a conference at the University of Texas at Austin in October 2011. The meeting encouraged a series of healthy dialogues with the general public seasoned scholars and those just beginning to learn about and research these topics of slavery and sexual intimacy. A select group of scholars met again in the fall of 2012 in New York to continue the conversation. This volume is a result of these ongoing conversations with additional scholarly voices added as the project evolved. The volume places sexuality at the center of slavery studies in the Americas (the United States Carribbean and South America). In many mainstream histories of slavery the editors argue that scholars have marginalized or simply overlooked the importance of sexual practices. But sexual intimacy comprised a core terrain of struggle between slaveholders and the enslaved. The essays explore consensual sexual intimacy and expression within slave communities as well as sexual relationships across lines of race status and power. Contributors explore sexuality as a tool of control exploitation and repression and also as an expression of autonomy resistance and defiance. Essayists include Jim Downs Sowande Mustakeem Bianca Premo Marisa J. Guentes Trevor Burnard Jessica Millward Leslie Harris Thomas Foster David Doddington and Stephanie Jones Rogers. All essays except those by Foster and Camp are new and were expressly written for this volume Introduction Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie M. Harris Early European views of African bodies : beauty Stephanie M.H. Camp Toiling in the fields : valuing female slaves in Jamaica 1674 1788 Trevor Burnard Reading the specter of racialized gender in eighteenth century Bridgetown Barbados Marisa J. Fuentes As if she were my own : love and law in the slave society of eighteenth century Peru Bianca Premo Wombs of liberation : petitions law and the black womans body in Maryland 1780 1858 Jessica Millward Rethinking sexual violence and the marketplace of slavery : white women the slave market and enslaved peoples sexualized bodies in the nineteenth century South Stephanie Jones Rogers The sexual abuse of black men under American slavery Thomas A. Foster Manhood sex and power in antebellum slave communities David Doddington Whats love got to do with it : concubinage and enslaved women and girls in the antebellum South Brenda E. Stevenson When the present is past : writing the history of sexuality and slavery Jim Downs