2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

This lightening session brings together scholars working on the history of black girlhood in Brazil, the Caribbean, East Africa, and the US from the seventeenth century to the present. Black girls are too often invisible as citizens, in the archives, and in the histories we tell. Participants on this panel demonstrate why research centered on black girls is essential to understanding larger questions of rights, nationality, and social welfare.  This session pushes the new subfield of black girls’ history by adapting a diasporic lens to consider the commonalities and differences among black girls’ experiences of citizenship.

Participants identify three shared themes: age, bodies, and generations.  First, the states’ stake in using age to define who counts as a girl becomes clear in Colleen Vasconcellos’ work on enslaved youth in the Jamaican plantation complex, Corrie Decker’s research on child marriage in colonial East Africa, and Cari Maes’ study of Brazil’s National Children’s Department.  Second, LaKisha Simmons and Okezi Otovo highlight the importance of girls’ reproductive health as a defining feature of citizenship in the US and Brazil.  Third, Simmons, Corinne Field and Jamie Petts focus on the importance of intergenerational mentoring as a means of empowering black girls as active citizens.  Laura Lovett will serve as commentator, drawing out common themes and identifying questions for shared discussion with the audience.  This panel will enable historians to think more deliberately about the intersections of age, gender, and race as defining features of citizenship.