Liana Beatrice Valerio is in the final year of her PhD in History. Her work examines the comparative emotional worlds of elite slaveholders in South Carolina and Cuba, 1820 – 1850, and the contrasting ‘genres’ of slaveholding each presented in writing when discussing their experiences of mastery to various audiences. The thesis questions the manner in which the social expectations of masculine behaviour observed in each region created an environment of emotional freedom, or strangulation, as well as exploring how the antithetical statuses of increasingly secessionist South Carolina, and ‘ever faithful’ Spanish colony Cuba, affected the words used by elite slaveholders to discuss slavery in each region. Liana’s work contrasts the public against the private, and the censored proslavery script against what was perceived to have been slanderous vilification, often provided by abolitionists or those opposed to the continuation of the Atlantic slave-trade.

Liana is also personally interested in the history of football in Argentina, especially the social function of the Barras Bravas among marginalised groups.

Keywords: Cuba, History of the Emotions, slavery, masculinity, Spanish Empire, censorship, nationalism