Dr Liana Beatrice Valerio
Teaching Fellow in History
My research specialisms are the History of Slavery, the History of the Americas, and the History of Emotions.
My work focusses on slavery in the United States and Cuba. I am currently adapting my PhD thesis into my first book, provisionally titled Violent White Emotion: Slavery, Fear, and Performance in Nineteenth Century South Carolina & Cuba.
Using two emotions – fear and confidence – I theorise that the denial of White fear, and the performance of White confidence, was an emotional dynamic fundamental to perpetuating slavery in the Americas. These two odious emotions were deployed by White prolific enslavers in Cuba and South Carolina to deflect abolitionist criticism; to imbue the sadistic violence they enacted upon enslaved individuals with intentional emotional messages; to reassure investors of the economic reliability of slave societies; and to fiercely reaffirm White supremacy following incidents of enslaved revolt and rebellion. My book considers this explosive and ferociously paranoid emotional dynamic as a performance of White masculinity, which leaves lasting, violent legacies across the Atlantic world.
I am the Director of Making of the Modern World, Warwick's core History module, and I act on the Academic Conduct Panel.
Teaching at Warwick
HI2K8 - History of Global Organised Crime (WIISP Module)
HI153 - Making of the Modern World
HI111 - A History of the United States
HI115 - Latin America: Themes and Problems
HI3S9 - Space, Place, and Movement in Atlantic Slave Societies: Brazil, Cuba and West Africa, 1791-1888
Published Articles
Also in print: Slavery and Emotions in the Atlantic World (ed. by Beth Wilson & Emily West)
Book Reviews
Valerio, LB. 2023. Teresa Prados-Torreira, The Power of Their Will: Slaveholding Women in Nineteenth-Century Cuba(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2021) [Book Review]. New West Indian Guide, 97(1-2), pp. 158-159. (10.1163/22134360-09701050)
Valerio, LB. 2021. Alejandro de la Fuente & Ariela Gross, Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana, 1500–1860 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020) [Book Review]. Slavery and Abolition, 42(3), pp. 655-656. (10.1080/0144039X.2021.1949905)
Valerio, LB. 2021. Lawrence Aje & Catherine Armstrong eds., The Many Faces of Slavery: New Perspectives on Slave Ownership and Experiences in the Americas (London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020) [Book Review]. Social History, 46(2), pp. 224-226. (10.1080/03071022.2021.1896239)
Valerio, LB. 2019. Eugene Genovese, The Sweetness of Life: Southern Planters at Home (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) [Book Review]. Journal of American Studies, 53(3), pp. 837-838. (10.1017/S0021875819000513)
Valerio, LB. 2019. Paul D. Naish, Slavery and Silence: Latin America and the U.S. Slave Debate (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) [Book Review]. Slavery & Abolition, 40(1), pp. 215-216. (10.1080/0144039X.2019.1565433)
Academic Profile
2023-5: Teaching Fellow in History, University of Warwick
2022: Lecturer, Histories of the Global South, De Montfort University
2021-2: Teaching Fellow in Latin American History, University of Warwick
2020-2021: Research Assistant, 'La Florida: The Interactive Digital Archive of the Americas', University of South Florida, St. Petersburg
2015-2019 - PhD in History, University of Warwick
2014-2015 - MsT in U.S. History, St Antony's College, Oxford University
2009-2012 - History, Literature, and Cultures of the Americas, University of Warwick (BA Hons)
Liana Beatrice Valerio
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How to pronounce my name https://voca.ro/1aefrycDzcUV