<mods:mods xmlns:mods="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-7.xsd"><mods:titleInfo><mods:title>In Search of Equiano’s Sister: Girlhood and Slavery in the Early Modern British Atlantic, 1600-1807</mods:title></mods:titleInfo><mods:typeOfResource authority="primo">dissertations</mods:typeOfResource><mods:name type="personal"><mods:namePart>Cummings, Sherri V.</mods:namePart><mods:role><mods:roleTerm type="text">creator</mods:roleTerm></mods:role></mods:name><mods:name type="personal"><mods:namePart>Ferreira, Roquinaldo</mods:namePart><mods:role><mods:roleTerm type="text">Advisor</mods:roleTerm></mods:role></mods:name><mods:name type="personal"><mods:namePart>Fisher, Linford</mods:namePart><mods:role><mods:roleTerm type="text">Reader</mods:roleTerm></mods:role></mods:name><mods:name type="personal"><mods:namePart>Bogues, Barrymore</mods:namePart><mods:role><mods:roleTerm type="text">Reader</mods:roleTerm></mods:role></mods:name><mods:name type="personal"><mods:namePart>Morgan, Jennifer L.</mods:namePart><mods:role><mods:roleTerm type="text">Reader</mods:roleTerm></mods:role></mods:name><mods:name type="corporate"><mods:namePart>Brown University. Department of History</mods:namePart><mods:role><mods:roleTerm type="text">sponsor</mods:roleTerm></mods:role></mods:name><mods:originInfo><mods:copyrightDate>2022</mods:copyrightDate></mods:originInfo><mods:physicalDescription><mods:extent>10, 224 p.</mods:extent><mods:digitalOrigin>born digital</mods:digitalOrigin></mods:physicalDescription><mods:note type="thesis">Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2022</mods:note><mods:genre authority="aat">theses</mods:genre><mods:abstract>Abstract of “In Search of Equiano’s Sister:
Girlhood and Slavery in the Early Modern British Atlantic, 1600-1807,”
by Sherri V. Cummings, Ph.D., Brown University, May 2022
In his notable memoir, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, published in 1789, Olaudah Equiano describes his captivity in the Bight of Biafra, subsequent enslavement in Virginia and the Caribbean, and his freedom in England. The African abolitionist, who was kidnapped alongside his younger sister, illustrates the harrowing ordeal in detail, and was twice separated from her before his Atlantic crossing. As he recalls this early chapter of his life, Equiano laments his sister’s unknown fate as an innocent victim of the slave trade, but never once mentions her name. Hence, this dissertation uses the obligatory question of “what happened to Equiano’s sister?” as a metaphor to examine girlhood in West Africa and transatlantic slavery in England and its colonies in the Caribbean and North America from 1600 to 1807, juxtaposed against intersections of race, geography, labor, and British colonial legislation that labeled captive Africans as slaves and chattel property.
In contrast to the forced bonded status of African girls in England and the Americas during the early modern period, the construction of European girlhood evolved as the lives of English girls were transformed due to the growing accessibility of wealth provided by global / Atlantic trade. Increased leisure time for Europeans meant more devotion to family. Furthermore, Enlightenment ideals promoted by intellectual scholars encouraged English families to invest in the education of their children thus removing them from the sphere of adulthood and labor. Many in the British and colonial populace embraced these ideals for their sons and daughters and white girlhood became protected, shifting from outside the home to the hearth. Over time, daughters of elite families were afforded the same paths to education and social mobility as elite sons, albeit meticulously protected by their parents. And although white girlhood became protected and dependent upon social and hierarchical cues, these protections were not afforded to enslaved African girls who were forcibly separated from their beloved homelands and intimate kinship networks to labor in England and her colonies in the Americas.</mods:abstract><mods:subject><mods:topic>Early Modern England,</mods:topic></mods:subject><mods:subject authority="fast" authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast" valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/01120426"><mods:topic>Slavery</mods:topic></mods:subject><mods:subject><mods:topic>Atlantic World</mods:topic></mods:subject><mods:subject authority="fast" authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast" valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/01208476"><mods:topic>Portugal</mods:topic></mods:subject><mods:subject authority="fast" authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast" valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/01239509"><mods:topic>Africa</mods:topic></mods:subject><mods:subject authority="fast" authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast" valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/01397126"><mods:topic>Black Atlantic</mods:topic></mods:subject><mods:subject authority="fast" authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast" valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/01239521"><mods:topic>West Africa</mods:topic></mods:subject><mods:subject><mods:topic>Girlhood</mods:topic></mods:subject><mods:subject authority="fast" authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast" valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/00942866"><mods:topic>Girls</mods:topic></mods:subject><mods:subject authority="fast" authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast" valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/01243266"><mods:topic>West Indies--British West Indies</mods:topic></mods:subject><mods:subject authority="fast" authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast" valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/01241913"><mods:topic>New England</mods:topic></mods:subject><mods:language><mods:languageTerm authority="iso639-2b">English</mods:languageTerm></mods:language><mods:recordInfo><mods:recordContentSource authority="marcorg">RPB</mods:recordContentSource><mods:recordCreationDate encoding="iso8601">20220706</mods:recordCreationDate></mods:recordInfo></mods:mods>