My research examines slavery and its legacies, with particular interests in gender, family, testimony, memory and public history. Selected publications are listed below.
Bringing together Louisiana’s interviews with formerly enslaved people for the first time, this volume reconstructs a fragmented archive while examining the racial and interpersonal dynamics that shaped how testimony was recorded and preserved. The collection explores slavery, emancipation, family and community, alongside folklore, language and Black medical knowledge.
Voices of the Formerly Enslaved in Louisiana: The WPA Narratives
Louisiana State University Press, 2025
Public history impact
The WPA interviews continue to inform my research, teaching and public-history practice. The narratives form the basis of a student-led digital humanities project reconstructing the lives of formerly enslaved people through the narratives and other digitised archives, and have also been used within the Black Maternal Health Project to explore histories of Black motherhood, reproductive knowledge and community-based healthcare.
Selected Journal Articles
“Conceived in Violence: Enslaved Mothers and Children Born of Rape in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana.” Slavery & Abolition
“Race, Slavery, and the Expression of Sexual Violence in Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon.” American Nineteenth Century History
"Learning Slavery at Home: Garçonnières and Adolescent Enslavers in Rural Louisiana 1806–1861", Journal of Global Slavery