Event: FRIDAY SEMINAR: A Historical Ecology of Slavery in the Danish West Indies

Speaker:

Dr. Justin Dunnavant
UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow
University of California, Santa Cruz

Bio:

Dr. Justin Dunnavant is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow
at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He holds a BA in
History and Anthropology from Howard University and an
MA and Ph.D. from the University of Florida. While his
former research interrogated the history and representation of minority groups in southern Ethiopia, his current work in the US Virgin Islands investigates the relationship between ecology and enslavement in the former Danish West Indies.Justin has conducted archaeological research in US VirginIslands, Belize, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mozambique, andThe Gambia. 

Abstract:

The transatlantic slave trade era – marked by chattel slavery, racial capitalism, and exploitative plantation economies – radically transformed societies and environments in the Americas. In this talk, I attempt to craft a historical ecology of the African Diaspora through an analysis of slavery in the Danish West Indies. Drawing from an array of archaeological, historical and environmental data, I argue that the development of plantation slavery elicited lasting ecological changes as colonial planters developed exploitative monocrop agricultural systems and enslaved Africans made a life in the Caribbean. Theoretically, I use a Black Geographic lens to interrogate the relationship between African diasporic communities and their Atlantic environments. Finally, I posit the need to engage questions of sustainability as a form of redress in contemporary archaeological praxis.