The writings show how gender relations have been constructed on the African continent and reflect the changes in approach and inquiry that have been brought about as the authors consider gender identities and difference in their work. Specific themes covered here include the contestation and representation of gender, femininity and masculinity: livelihoods and life ways: gender and religion, gender and culture: gender and governance.
Offering detailed analyses of slave emancipation in specific societies, the contributors discuss all of the diverse actors in emancipation : slaves, abolitionists, free people of colour, state officials, and slave owners. Whether considering the construction of a postslavery masculine subjectivity in Jamaica, the work of two white U.S. abolitionist women with the Freedmen's Bureau after the Civil War, freedwomen's negotiations of labour rights in Puerto Rico, slave women's contributions to the slow unraveling of slavery in French West Africa, or the ways Brazilian abolitionists deployed representations of femininity as virtuous and moral, these essays demonstrate the gains that a gendered apporach offers to understanding the complex processes of emancipation. Some chapters also explore theories and methodologies that enable a gendered reading of postslavery archives. the editors' substantial introduction traces the reasons for and patterns of women's and men's different experiences of emancipation throughout the Atlantic world.