Creolization and Transatlantic Blackness: The Visual and Material Cultures of Slavery

Creolization and Transatlantic Blackness: The Visual and Material Cultures of Slavery explores one of the central concepts in the study of Transatlantic Slavery, creolization. Creolization defines the cultural, political, and social transformations that occurred in the Americas when Europeans interacted with enslaved Africans. But for the enslaved, creolization was also defined by deprivation, surveillance, control, and prohibitions. Departing from more conscribed definitions, the authors instead argue for an expansion of the term regarding duration, temporality, population, and importantly, regional scope. This rethinking impacts considerations of climate and the practices of slavery that are typically included and excluded from the study of creolization.

Eschewing the normative focus on language and music, the authors instead center art and visual, and material cultures, as both outcomes and practices, to consider the ways that cultural production in the period of slavery and its aftermath was irrevocably impacted by the collision of races and cultures in the Americas. The chapters probe how creolization unfolded for differently constituted individuals and populations, as well as how it came to be articulated both in the historical moments of its enactment and its retroactive cultural representations and production. In so doing, they seek to both expand the terrain (literally and figuratively) of the definition of creolization and to turn towards an examination of its relevance for art and visual, and material cultures of the Transatlantic world.

Table of Contents

Charmaine A. Nelson, Editor

Forthcoming from London, UK, Routledge in 2024

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