Sasha Turner is Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University.
She is the author of Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childrearing and Slavery in Jamaica (Penn Press, 2017) which examines the struggles for control over biological reproduction and how central childbearing was to the organization of plantation work, the care of slaves, and the development of their culture. Her work has appeared in academic journals such as Slavey and Abolition and the Journal of Women’s History, and on popular platforms such as Black Perspectives.
Dr. Turner has received many awards for her work, including from, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, the Southern Association of Women Historians, the African American Intellectual History Society, Association of Black Women Historians, and North American Conference on British Studies. She is working on a new project on slavery and emotions.

Sasha Turner participe au Programme professeurs invités de l’EHESS.
Elle est invitée par Céline Flory (Mondes Américains/CERMA).
 

Conférences

 

1. Neither Idle nor Worthless: Accounting for Doll’s Labor & Value in the Economy of Slavery
 
Dans le cadre du séminaire du CENA, « Nouvelles recherches Nord-américanistes», organisé par Nicolas Barreyre, Tamara Boussac, Sarah Le Menestrel et Yann Philippe.

• Lundi 6 mai 2024 de 14h à 16h

Campus Condorcet, Bâtiment EHESS, Salle A427
2 Cours des Humanités, Aubervilliers

This presentation examines the unusual case of an enslaved woman called Doll who received wages for work as a midwife to enslaved women despite assessments of her as idle and worthless, having little to no cash value. Examining wages as a means to leverage Doll’s ties to and authority within the community of enslaved people for the benefit of the plantation, this presentation accounts for and reconcile values not easily disciplined by the logic of the numerical.

2. Abba: Navigating Motherhood & Slavery on the Terrain of Feeling

Dans le cadre du séminaire du CIRESC « Les mots de l’esclavage et du post-esclavage », organisé par Antonio de Almeida Mendes, Magali Bessone, Klara Boyer-Rossol, Myriam Cottias, Céline Flory, Ary Gordien et Romy Sanchez.

 • Vendredi 17 mai 2024 de 14h30 à 16h30

Campus Condorcet, Bâtiment EHESS, Salle A427
2 Cours des Humanités, Aubervilliers

This presentation offers an intimate portrait of the life of an enslaved woman, known as Abba and appears multiple times in the diary of a slaveholder in eighteenth Jamaica. Abba’s life, like many others chronicled in the diary, is incompletely established in the literature demeaned as a pathetic figure overcome by violence, domination, and a demanding labor regime. Shifting analytic gaze and narrative voice to the enslaved this discussion tells the story of Abba’s affective creativity and configuration of a life aligned her maternal and communal values.
 

3.  Interrogate (the) Master(’)s Narrative(s)

• Jeudi 23 mai 2024 de 16h30 à 18h30

Dans le cadre du séminaire “Les sources de l’histoire du fait colonial et impérial », de Camille Lefebvre.

Known for the detailed records of its inner workings, from tracing several generations of owners to indentured servants and enslaved workers; financial dealings and work arrangements; and weather patterns and environmental disasters, the Newton plantation papers are among the primary sources of writing histories of slavery in Barbados and the British colonized Caribbean. More than a transparent offering of data on labor discipline and commodity production, and plantation expenditure and income, a careful reading how and when information was conveyed renders visible the thinly veiled role of emotions in the economy of slavery. Focusing on the documentation techniques of local agents in Barbados, vested with powers of attorney to act in the stead of plantation landlords who resided in England, this presentation explores how local agents played on the worst fears of absentees to enhance their powers and conceal their depredations.


4. Writing Impossible Stories

 • Jeudi 30 mai 2024 de 16h30 à 18h30

Campus Condorcet, Bâtiment EHESS, Salle A427
2 Cours des Humanités, Aubervilliers

Dans le cadre du séminaire « Révolutions et contre-révolution en Amérique latine, une histoire contemporaine (1780-1980) », de Clément Thibaud.

A Matriarch. An elite. And a determined rebel who forged her own destiny and used her privilege and power on behalf of her fellow enslaved people. Through her might, the name by which she was known…Doll is immortalized in the annals of the plantation records and the stories of her valor and prudence proclaimed by generations of historians. How well can we know Doll and what really happened when the one by whom we come to know her story was the one who killed her… softly? Is it possible to tell a different story…one of torment and torture without physical evidence?
 

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