This week will focus on the ‘everyday’ modes of resistance that enslaved individuals and communities engaged in beyond the spectre of rebellion. Looking at both the middle passage and plantation experiences, this lecture will explain how the concept of everyday resistance has developed through time. In preparation for the seminar, students will each read a piece on a distinct form of everyday resistance, including truancy, reproductive resistance, suicide, cultural resistance, and crime. This approach will allow seminar discussions to focus on the wide-ranging ways enslaved people resisted power across time and space.

Seminar Questions

1) What were enslaved people’s aims when engaging in everyday forms of resistance?

2) How do we recover histories of everyday resistance?

3) How did gender shape approaches to, and experiences of, resistance?