Santos Invited to Present Research at International Conference

Dr. Martha Santos, Associate Professor of History, has been invited to present a paper at the international conference, "Enslaved Motherhood and Childlessness: Comparing Brazil with other Atlantic Slave Societies," held at the University of São Paulo, Brazil between September 24-26 of 2015. The conference has been organized by the British-based Mothering Slaves Research Network. The organization seeks to bring together an international group of scholars working on the mothering experiences of enslaved women and the care of children in the Atlantic slave societies of Brazil, the United States and the Caribbean. Santos’s paper, “Mothering Slaves, Labor, and the Persistence of Slavery in Northeast Brazil: A Non-Plantation View from the Hinterlands of Ceará, 1813-1884,” contributes to scholars’ understanding of the importance of enslaved women's childbearing in rural Brazil as the era of the Atlantic slave trade came to a close.

The São Paulo conference is the second segment of a three-part international conference series, “Mothering Slaves: Comparative Perspectives on Motherhood, Childlessness and the Care of Children in Atlantic Slave Societies,” held at the University of Newcastle, the University of São Paulo and the University of Reading between 2014 and 2016. The three-year research initiative is funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom.