Enslaved women's fugitivity in Louisiana, 1812-1865

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This project will examine enslaved women's escape from bondage in antebellum Louisiana. Apioneering investigation of the agency and resistance of enslaved women in the state, it alsooffers a unique contribution to exciting new studies exploring the gendered dynamics of enslavedfugitivity in the American South. The preponderance of enslaved men among advertised fugitivity,or fugitive slave advertisements, has led slavery scholars to conclude that fugitivity was moreprevalent among men than women. Historians have subsumed the distinct experiences of femalerunaways into broader narratives of flight, where running-away is treated as a masculineendeavour. This project challenges this paradigm. It argues that enslaved women were no lesslikely than enslaved men to attempt escape, but simply that their fugitivity patterns were different.As such, it reframes our understanding of enslaved women's resistance in a way that illuminateswider conceptions of women's activism.