Professor Emily West
Professor of Early American History
Brasenose College
Research Interests
I am broadly interested in issues of race and gender in American history and my research focusses on US slavery in the US South, especially the lives of enslaved women, the relationships between enslaved spouses, family life under enslavement, and affective ties between enslaved people and free people of colour. I am also interested in motherhood and the history of infant and child feeding, including wet nursing.
Publications
Cooking for the Quarters: Enslaved Women & the Labor of Care in the Antebellum South
Women who prepared food for enslaved people, rather than enslavers, have been neglected in historical scholarship. Their labor within the quarters has been marginalized, belittled, and even ignored, because it fell within the remit of gendered care and nurture. In this book, Emily West illustrates how these mostly older women performed vital roles in slaveholding sites, as their enslavers increasingly tried to regulate food distribution, preparation, and consumption. Enslavers attempted to impose highly efficient, communal food regimes to minimize waste and time lost from work elsewhere.
DPhil Students
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