Barbara Krauthamer's Teaching and Research InterestsResearch Interests:
Main area of research interest is the history of slavery and emancipation in the Americas. Currently revising a manuscript on the transition from slavery to freedom in Texas and the Indian Territory. This study examines African Americans’ family and community life during the era of emancipation in the U.S. borderlands. Rather than focusing solely on freed slaves’ political participation or labor relations with former masters, this study attempts to understand the multiple meanings of freedom that developed in freedpeople’s relationships and conflicts with each other. This concentration on family and community life, furthermore, places the lives of freedwomen and children at the center of the study and illuminates the ways in which gender identity shaped conceptions of freedom.
Future projects include a study of African Americans’ contact and relationships with Native Americans during the first half of the nineteenth century. Specifically, this work will explore the ways in which enslaved and free blacks formulated ideas about racial, cultural and national identity as a consequence of their proximity to and involvement with Native American communities. Another project will trace the cultural implications of the post-1808 illegal international slave trade into the United States and the flight of some enslaved African Americans to the Caribbean and Latin America.
Teaching Interests:
Primary teaching interests are the history of the making of slavery and freedom, and the formations of race and gender identity in the Americas. Undergraduate courses—"Race, Gender and Citizenship," "The U.S.-Spanish borderlands," "African-American Family Life," and "Women in Slavery in the Americas"—emphasize the construction of racial identity in the nineteenth century, the development of African-American culture, and the racialized and gendered meanings and manifestations of citizenship. Graduate courses—"The Transition from Slavery to Freedom in the Americas," and "Africans and Indigenous Peoples in the Americas"—present a transnational approach to the study of slavery, emancipation and freedom.
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