Discovering the women in slavery
Subtitle: emancipating perspectives on the American past
By: edited by Patricia Morton.
Contributors: Morton, Patricia.
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
Subjects: Women slaves -- United States -- History; Slavery -- United States -- History; Women abolitionists -- United States -- History; Women -- Southern States -- History; African American women -- Southern States -- History
Description: Discovering the Women in Slavery is a collection of fourteen original essays on women's experiences of slavery in America, researched and written from gender- and women-focused perspectives. The essays discuss not only slave women but also plantation and slaveholding mistresses and free women of color, in contexts ranging from the colonial era to the Civil War South.

Intended for a wide readership, this book is especially designed to bring attention to the new questions and findings about American slavery that are engendered by today's exploration of the experience and roles of the women generally left invisible, stereotyped, or both, by conventional American slavery history.

As Patricia Morton notes in her historiographical introduction, Discovering the Women in Slavery continues the advances made, especially over the last decade, in understanding how women experienced slavery and shaped slavery history. In addition, the collection illuminates some emancipating new perspectives and methodologies. Throughout, the contributors pay close attention - over time and place - to variations, differences, and diversity regarding issues of gender and sex, race and ethnicity, and class.

They draw on such qualitative sources as letters, novels, oral histories, court records, and local histories as well as quantitative sources like census data and parish records.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 313-317).