Forced reproduction and the ‘value’ of enslaved women and girls in the antebellum US South, 1812-1865
This paper, taken from the third chapter of Aisha Djelid’s forthcoming monograph, Forced Reproduction: Slavery, Gender, and Family in the Antebellum South under contract with the University of Georgia Press, explores antebellum enslavers’ “regimentation” of the health of enslaved people, particularly women and girls, to establish a proto-eugenic and pronatalist ideology to reproduce the slave regime. It examines the relation of these ideal characteristics within diet and the medical governance of enslaved people throughout the lifecycle, by arguing that children, adolescents, and finally adults and pregnant women, all experienced reproductive regimentation in ways unique to their current stage of life. This paper primarily explores the experiences of enslaved children and adult women to consider how their enslavers interfered in their medical lives to monitor and cultivate a higher market value. It further considers what a “desirable body” looked like, the distribution of rations and the consequences of hunger, the allocation of medicine, and, lastly, enslavers’ attitudes toward fertility and pregnant women. While enslaved parents raised their families with love and care, concerned that they had enough to eat to survive the brutal realties of day-to-day slavery, their enslavers were concerned with raising productive producers and reproducers of slavery.
Date: 13 March 2025, 11:45
Venue: St John's College, St Giles OX1 3JP
Venue Details: 21 St Giles
Speaker: Aisha Djelid (RAI, Oxford)
Organising department: Faculty of History
Part of: Centre for Women’s, Gender, Identity, and Queer History events (WGIQ)[formerly known as CGIS].
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: Belinda Clark