Alexandra Meagen McDougle

My proposed dissertation research will investigate the reproductive labor of Black women, both biologically and socially, in order to understand racialization as a historical process in the Atlantic world. This includes exploring the oft under-recognized social labors of Black women in resistance and community formation during enslavement, the centrality of Black women’s reproductive labors within the political economy and underlying logics of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and the ways slave codes within the Atlantic world are responding to rather than producing the conditions of Black life. Using 17th-19th century Maryland as a case study, I explore the ways legislation governing racialized reproduction reflects the shifting logics of racialization and heritable enslavement. This project will address the following questions: What are the biological, cultural, and ecological conditions preceding legislation on racialized reproduction in Maryland from 17th century colonial settlement through 19th century abolition? How do localized perspectives on racialization in Maryland complicate the geospatial textures of racialization within the English Atlantic?