Brazilian Atlantic: Archives and Stories of Illegal Slavery

FAIN: FEL-268467-20

Yuko Miki
Fordham University (Bronx, NY 10458-9993)

Research and writing leading to a book on illegal slavery in the 19th-century Atlantic World.

This project is a narrative history of illegal slavery in the nineteenth-century Atlantic World. Through four intertwined stories about a slave ship and its captives, two West African men, a financier, and a Kongolese prince, it investigates how illegal slavery thrived throughout the Atlantic World in general, and in Brazil in particular, in the very midst of the “Age of Emancipation.” In paying attention to the lived experiences of women, men, and children forced into, or who profited from, illegal slavery, this project challenges the predominant, sweeping narratives of the nineteenth-century as the triumph of abolition, free trade, and liberal freedom. Through an ethnographic reading of the archives of illegal slavery, this project weaves together the past and present, historical characters and archival encounters to propose a new way of writing about the ambiguous histories of slavery and freedom that centers the suffering and afterlives of the enslaved.

Associated Products

Reimagining the Middle Passage (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Reimagining the Middle Passage
Author: Yuko Miki
Abstract: An Afrofuturist Symposium (online) hosted by the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum. My own presentation was part of the panel "Aquatic Space" on reimagining Water and the Middle Passage.
Date: 1/28/2022
Primary URL: http://https://airandspace.si.edu/afrofuturism/claiming-space-symposium
Primary URL Description: This is the site for the Symposium.
Conference Name: Claiming Space Symposium at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum

Keynote Address (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Keynote Address
Abstract: Keynote Address for SUNY Stonybrook Interdisciplinary History Graduate Student Conference
Author: Yuko Miki
Date: 9/15/2021
Location: Stony Brook, NY

Book Launch Symposium (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Book Launch Symposium
Abstract: Book Launch Symposium for edited volume Memória, Interculituralidade, e Cidadania in Brazil, streamed online, in Portuguese.
Author: Yuko Miki
Date: 10/15/2021
Location: Seropédica, RJ, Brazil, streamed internationally.

---