Microhistory, Biography, Fiction

Abstract

We live in an extraordinarily rich time for the study of slavery and emancipation. In the last fifty years, literally thousands of books on the history of slavery have been published, many of these appearing in the last decade. One narrative strategy, increasingly embraced by historians of a range of periods and settings, is the biography, telling life stories of particular people in slavery and upon emancipation. Rather than writing about a mass of mostly anonymous individuals and the instit...