Professor Katherine Paugh
Associate Professor of Atlantic World Women's History
Corpus Christi College
01865 (2) 76741
Katherine.paugh@history.ox.ac.uk
My research focuses on gender, race, and medicine in the Atlantic world from the seventeenth through the early nineteenth centuries. My first book explored the politics of motherhood in the slave societies of the British Empire during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I am currently at work on a second book on the history of venereal disease in the British Empire. I am interested in supervising postgraduate work on race, gender, and/or medicine in the Atlantic world, and especially the Caribbean.
Research Interests
- Early North America and the Caribbean
- Race, Gender, Medicine, and the Body
- The Politics of Motherhood and Fertility
Publications
The Politics of Reproduction: Race, Medicine and Fertility in the Age of Abolition
The fertility of Afro-Caribbean women's bodies was at the crux of visions of economic success elaborated by many British politicians, planters, and doctors during the age of abolition. Reformers hoped that a home-grown labor force would obviate the need for the Atlantic slave trade. By establishing the ubiquity of visions of fertility and subsequent economic growth during the age of abolition, The Politics of Reproduction sheds fresh light on the oft-debated question of whether abolitionism was understood by contemporaries as economically beneficial to the British Empire.