Book ID: CBB965808353

African American Slavery and Disability: Bodies, Property, and Power in the Antebellum South, 1800-1860 (2013)

unapi

Boster, Dea H. (Author)


Routledge
Studies in African American history and culture
Publication date: 2013
Language: English


Disability is often mentioned in discussions of slave health, mistreatment and abuse, but constructs of how "able" and "disabled" bodies influenced the institution of slavery has gone largely overlooked. This volume uncovers a history of disability in African American slavery from the primary record, analyzing how concepts of race, disability, and power converged in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Slaves with physical and mental impairments often faced unique limitations and conditions in their diagnosis, treatment, and evaluation as property. Slaves with disabilities proved a significant challenge to white authority figures, torn between the desire to categorize them as different or defective and the practical need to incorporate their "disorderly" bodies into daily life. Being physically "unfit" could sometimes allow slaves to escape the limitations of bondage and oppression, and establish a measure of self-control. Furthermore, ideas about and reactions to disability--appearing as social construction, legal definition, medical phenomenon, metaphor, or masquerade--highlighted deep struggles over bodies in bondage in antebellum America.

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Reviewed By

Review Jeff Forret (2015) Review of "African American Slavery and Disability: Bodies, Property, and Power in the Antebellum South, 1800-1860". Journal of Southern History (pp. 180-182). unapi

Review Marie Jenkins Schwartz (2015) Review of "African American Slavery and Disability: Bodies, Property, and Power in the Antebellum South, 1800-1860". Journal of American History (pp. 249-249). unapi

Citation URI
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Authors & Contributors
Boster, Dea H.
Gudmestad, Robert H.
Hough, Mazie
Hurt, R. Douglas
Kodama, Kaori
Linker, Beth
Journals
Journal of Southern History
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
História, Ciências, Saúde---Manguinhos
Journal of the History of Biology
Nineteenth-Century Contexts
Publishers
University of North Carolina Press
Éditions Rue d'Ulm
Florida State University
Louisiana State University Press
University of Georgia Press
University of Illinois Press
Concepts
Slavery
African Americans
Health care
Disabilities; disability; accessibility
African Americans and science
Medicine and society
People
Audouard, Maxence
Cartwright, Samuel A.
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
Places
Southern states (U.S.)
United States
Great Britain
France
Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
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