CSUB’s History Forum hosts March event with Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson

History Forum to discuss “Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy and Freedom in the Atlantic World”

By California State University, Bakersfield

March 17^th, 2021

The History Department at California State University, Bakersfield will host their second History Forum of the year on Friday, March 26 at 3 p.m. via Zoom with Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson, assistant professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. This event is free and open to the public.

The talk, entitled “Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy and Freedom in the Atlantic World” will draw material from Dr. Johnson’s book of the same title.

“Attendees will have an opportunity to learn about Black women’s experiences in New Orleans during slavery. Dr. Johnson’s talk will deepen and expand our ideas of what freedom meant and what it looked like for African women and women of African descent in the 18th century. The talk will also address the challenges faced by historians who examine the lives of people who were systematically ignored, erased and misrepresented in archival sources,” said Dr. Kate Mulry, assistant professor, colonial American history, Atlantic world and environmental history.

Dr. Johnson will examine “how the story of freedom and all of its ambiguities begins with intimate acts steeped in power.” She will explore “the nature of the complicated intimate and kinship ties used by Black women to construct freedom in the Atlantic world.”

As described on the event poster, “It is shaped by the peculiar oppressions faced by African women and women of African descent. And it pivots on the self-conscious choices Black women made to retain control over their bodies and selves, their loved ones, and their futures.”

“Slavery's rise in the Americas was institutional, carnal, and reproductive. The intimacy of bondage whets the appetites of slaveowners, traders, and colonial officials with fantasies of domination that trickled into every social relationship—husband and wife, sovereign and subject, master and laborer. Intimacy—corporeal, carnal, quotidian—tied slaves to slaveowners, women of African descent and their children to European and African men,” the description continues.

This event is co-sponsored by CSUB’s Department of History, the Kegley Institute of Ethics, the Public History Institute and the Dhada Family Foundation.