The Boundaries of Freedom

Brodwyn Fischer is Professor of Latin American History at the University of Chicago. She has won awards from the Social Science History Association, the Urban Studies Association, the Brazilian Studies Association, and the Conference on Latin American History. She has authored two books, A Poverty of Rights and Cities from Scratch. Keila Grinberg is Professor of Latin American and Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a specialist on slavery and race in the Atlantic World. Her book A Black Jurist in a Slave Society was a finalist for the 2020 Frederick Douglass Prize.

• Introduction: Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth Century Brazil Brodwyn Fischer and Keila Grinberg; Part I. Law, Precarity, and Affective Economies during Brazil's Slave Empire; 1. The Crime of Illegal Enslavement and the Precariousness of Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Brazil Keila Grinberg and Beatriz Mamigonian; 2. “Hellish Nurseries:” Slave Smuggling, Child Trafficking, and Local Complicity in Nineteenth Century Pernambuco Marcus Carvalho; 3. Agrarian Empires, Plantation Communities, and Slave Families in a Nineteenth Century Brazilian Coffee Zone Ricardo Salles and Mariana Muaze; 4. Motherhood Silenced: Enslaved Wet Nurses in Nineteenth Century Brazil Mariana Muaze; 5. The Abolition of Slavery and International Relations on the Southern Border of the Brazilian Empire, 1840–1865 Keila Grinberg; Part II. Bounded Emancipations ; 6. Body, Gender and Identity on the Threshold of Abolition: A Tale Doubly Told by Benedicta Maria da Ilha, a Free Woman and Ovídia, a Slave Maria Helena Pereira Machado; 7. Slavery, Freedom and the Relational City in Abolition-era Recife Brodwyn Fischer; 8. Migrações ao sul: Memories of Land and Work in Brazil's Slaveholding Southeast Robson Luis Machado Martins and Flávio Gomes; Part III. Racial Silence and Black Intellectual Subjectivities; 9. Breaking the Silence: Racial Subjectivities, Abolitionism, and Public Life in mid-1870s Recife Celso Castilho and Rafaella Valença de Andrade Galvão; 10. The Life and Times of a Free Black Man in Brazil's Era of Abolition: Teodoro Sampaio, 1855–1937 Wlamyra Albuquerque; 11. Political Dissonance in the Name of Freedom: Brazil's Black Organizations in the Age of Abolition Ana Flavia Magalhães Pinto; 12. The East River Reminds Me of the Paraná: Racism, Subjectivity and Transnational Political Action in the Life of André Rebouças Hebe Mattos; Part IV. Afterlives of Slavery, Afterwards of Abolition; 13. The Past was Black: Modesto Brocos, The Redemption of Ham, and Brazilian Slavery Daryle Williams; 14. From Crias de Casa to Filhos de Criação: Raising Illegitimate Children in the “Big House” in Post-Abolition Brazil Sueann Caulfield; 15. Slave Songs and Racism in the post-Abolition Americas: Eduardo das Neves and Bert Williams in Comparative Perspective Martha Abreu; Bibliography; Index.

'This pathbreaking volume reveals and refines the signature methods that have placed the 'Brazilian school' at the forefront of Latin American historiographies of slavery, abolition, and post-emancipation societies. Moving nimbly between broad processes and lived experience, contributors offer new perspectives, from the South Atlantic, on the urgent question of how dynamics rooted in slavery persist so powerfully after slavery's end.' Paulina L. Alberto, author of Black Legend: The Many Lives of Raúl Grigera and the Power of Racial Storytelling in Argentina