Racialized Motherhood

Women against the colonial regime: going beyond the enslaver’s gaze By Danas Kuzminas Enslaved women on the island of Barbados were subordinated and subjected to harsh conditions shaped by the regime of slavery. Gendered discourses meant that enslaved women had to …

In his final blog post for the project, our hardworking intern Danas Kuzminas writes about how Barbadian newspaper fugitive advertisements show enslaved women's efforts towards obtaining freedom for their children. Read it here: racializedmotherhood.blog/2026/02/10/w...

Kitty Pender and Sukey Frances: Enslaved Women in Barbadian Newspapers By Danas Kuzminas As I worked through hundreds of fugitive advertisements printed in Barbados during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the research process proved increasingly challenging. A…

Racialized Motherhood intern Danas Kuzminas has uploaded his 2nd blog post 📰 After hours spent in the (digital) archive, he reflects on how enslaved women and girls were portrayed by their enslavers in #Barbadian fugitive advertisements. Read the post here: racializedmotherhood.blog/2026/01/19/k...

Abolition Without Equality: Colonial Morality and the Illusion of Freedom By Danas Kuzminas. As an intern, joining the research team for the Racialized Motherhood project, my main task is to examine two newspapers (the Barbados Mercury and The Barbadian) printed in Barba…

Racialized Motherhood intern Danas Kuzminas has been looking at #newspapers from colonial #Barbados. In this blog post, you can read what he has noticed about how these sources conveyed colonial viewpoints on the #abolition of slavery: racializedmotherhood.blog/2025/12/18/a...

focus on the history of the Caribbean and/or the history of Atlantic slavery

Call for Papers - Privacy and Slavery, Past and Present: Academic and Artistic Perspectives on an Urgent Issue

#CfP - "Privacy and Slavery, Past and Present: Academic and Artistic Perspectives on an Urgent Issue". Deadline for abstracts: 1st April 2026 📨 teol.ku.dk/privacy/news...

HUM:Global Talk! with Sue Peabody: Recentering the Subaltern: Microhistory as Method. Public Lecture with Professor Sue Peabody, Washington State University, Vancouver. Time: 20 Nov. 2025, 13:00-15:00 Place: University of Copenhagen, South Campus, room 12.3.39

We are excited to have Professor Sue Peabody @profpeabs.bsky.social join us for a talk about methods and microhistory. Join us on 20 November 2025, 1-3 PM at UCPH @ucph.bsky.social , South Campus, room 12.3.39.

Creole Widows as the Most Stable Portion of Colonial Society By Felicia J. Fricke. Between 1789 and 1830, the population structure of the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Eustatius changed markedly. At the beginning of this period, the island was populated by 4…

Project team member @feliciafricke.bsky.social has just published a new blog post about widows in St. Eustatius around 1800 #Caribbean #history #colonialism You can read it here: racializedmotherhood.blog/2025/10/31/c...

The Widows of St. Eustatius: Stability and Survival in Colonial Society around 1800 Welcome to the LNUC Concurrences Seminar Series in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies!

Excited to present my research about widows and #Caribbean colonialism on Thurs 6 Nov at @lnuccon.bsky.social - you can attend in person or online. Hope to see you there! 🤗 lnu.se/en/meet-linn...

GLOBAL HISTORY SEMINAR SERIES. November 18, 10:15-12:00. Felicia J. Fricke, University of Copenhagen. "Fugitive Motherhood: Women Running from Slavery in the Insular Caribbean, 1770s-1870s". Contact Natacha Klein Kafer (natacha.klein_kafer@hist.lu.se) or Cecilia Lundstrom (cecilia.lundstrom@hist.lu.se) for Zoom link.

On 18 Nov I will be giving a guest lecture about my work on fugitive motherhood in the #Caribbean at @lund-university.bsky.social in the #GlobalHistory Seminar Series. Sign up here! www.sol.lu.se/en/the-depar...

Front page with decorative border. Wolter Robert van Hoëvell, De emancipatie der slaven in Neerlands-Indië: eene verhandeling (C. M. von Bolhuis Hoitsema, 1848). https://www.google.nl/books/edition/De_emancipatie_der_slaven_in_Neerlands_I/8jwsAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

In 1847, there was a discussion in the Dutch East Indies about whether to free children born to enslaved mothers. Read two very different accounts of what happened in our new #blogpost by @idalvos.bsky.social: racializedmotherhood.blog/2025/09/23/f...

We are here at the #ABRE2025 conference in Salamanca with the @rm-project.bsky.social. Yesterday we caught an amazing talk by Mateusz Czarnota on Conceição Evaristo’s idea of #escrevivência: writing born from lived experience of Afro-descendent women. Inspiring for our work on #RacializedMotherhood

Stability and survival: Creole widowhood in St. Eustatius, 1780s-1820s This article articulates the mortality gap between non-Caribbean (foreign) men and Caribbean (Creole) women on the Dutch island of St. Eustatius in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centurie...

New #OpenAccess #publication! 🚨 Creole widows were the most long-lived free people in 1780s-1820s St. Eustatius, Dutch #Caribbean - their stability was therefore instrumental in upholding colonialism. @inthesamesea.bsky.social @rm-project.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Fugitive advertisement from newspaper 'The Quebec Gazette' dated 8th March 1787, available from https://numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/4267091

The first #RacializedMotherhood #publication is out! A chapter in 'The Routledge Handbook of Information #History' looks at what fugitive ads in newspapers can tell us about both the violence of slavery and about the freedom seekers. Read more on our #blog:
racializedmotherhood.blog/2025/09/05/b...

We are pleased to announce that the Racialized Motherhood project now has a #webpage ✨ Find out more about what we are working on - including a #blog and #podcast! 📰🎙️https://saxoinstitute.ku.dk/research/history/racialised-motherhood/

A white woman in black leaning against a plinth with a white urn. She holds the hand of a little white girl, also dressed in black, whose doll has fallen to the floor (Rudolph Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, 1809, Philadelphia Museum of Art, https://archive.org/details/repositoryofarts21809acke/page/n237/mode/2up).

Project postdoc @feliciafricke.bsky.social will be presenting in #Sweden at @lnuccon.bsky.social Linnaeus University on 6 November! 🥳 Come along to hear about how long-lived widows contributed to colonial stability in the #Caribbean 🌎

Ida stands in front of her PowerPoint presentation, which is currently on a slide about Dutch bills in the East Indies. She is wearing a pink jacket and a white conference nametag, and she looks up at the slide while she talks.

Project PhD student @idalvos.bsky.social recently presented her research at the 9th Global Meeting of Slavery Past, Present and Future, which was held at the @vuamsterdam.bsky.social. She talked about the role of religion in Dutch and Spanish free womb discussions in the 1850s and 1870s.

Including 'Ethics in #Caribbean #Archaeology: Past, Present, and Future', which I co-edit with Eduardo Herrera Malatesta and Maaike de Waal 🎉 It will arrive in January 2026! ✨️

MPs vote to end prosecution for late term abortion in England and Wales Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi led the call to decriminalise the 1% of abortions that happen after 24 weeks.

Finally! Abortion laws in the UK have been outdated and inhumane.
Nobody should be prosecuted for having to make the decision to have an abortion.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

"Run away from the Subscriber about 20 days ago, A Small, slender made, negro woman named Juliana Sophia, has a mark on the left ancle, and is far advanced in pregnancy. If she returns in eight days she will be forgiven; if not, she will be given over to Justice; no person must harbour her, or they must abide by the consequences of the Law. A reward of one Joe will be given to any person who will take and deliver her to REBECCA STALLARD. 3d Feb. 1804." DANSK VESTINDISK REGIERINGS AVIS, 1804-02-07, available from Mediestream.

In March 1804, Juliana Sophia ran from her enslaver in St. Croix, Danish West Indies, seeking freedom for her unborn child. Hers is one of many instances where women sought freedom for the next generation in the #Caribbean - either alone, or with their children, parents, partners, and friends.

Professor Lise Jaillant presents her paper entitled "AI to Unlock Archives: Revolutionising Access to our Digital Past."

This week, project PhD candidate @idalvos.bsky.social is at the #DigitalHumanities conference #DHBenelux2025 in Amsterdam! 2025.dhbenelux.org

Making America pregnant again: the pro-natalist movement – podcast Moira Donegan on the different groups of people who want the US population to produce more babies

I had fun talking about the pro-natalist movement in America with The Guardian's Today in Focus:
www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2...

Opinion | A Brain-Dead Woman Is Being Kept on Machines to Gestate a Fetus. It Was Inevitable.

My guest essay for @nytimes.com about Adriana Smith. This situation is a tragedy from top to bottom, and there is so much complexity that can't be teased out in so few words. May she and the family left behind find peace soon.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/o...

Yesterday project postdoc @feliciafricke.bsky.social was at the opening event for the new Centre for #Digital and Computational #Humanities here in #Copenhagen! Exciting to see the start of this new hub where scholars can come together and learn from each other 😊 cdch.ku.dk

Natália da Silva Perez

Welcome to the Racialized Motherhood page! 🦋 You can read about our project goals in this interview with PI @silvaperez.bsky.social - dff.dk/en/our-funde...