‘I Felt All This’: Enslaved People's Emotional Lives in the Antebellum US South (Cambridge Studies on Black Women in US History) - Softcover

Wilson, Beth R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1009709453 ISBN 13: 9781009709453

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2026

Synopsis

Drawing on methods from the history of emotions to study enslaved people's lives, Beth R. Wilson exposes the social, cultural and political role that emotion played in the US South. Exploring both individual and collective emotions, Wilson shows how enslaved people resisted white people's attempts to restrict their feelings and expressions by developing their own emotional ideals and expectations. Moving through case studies that examine a range of underexplored forms of testimony, the book introduces readers to slave narratives, letters, written interviews and recorded testimony to show that emotion was central to how enslaved people resisted, survived and remembered the system of slavery. Enslaved people's descriptions of their individual experiences of love, pain, grief and joy are woven throughout this study, which provides a framework that historians can use to paint a nuanced, detailed and empathetic picture of the complex emotional impact of slavery.

About this title

About the Author

Beth R. Wilson is a Lecturer in American History at Cardiff University. She is co-editor (with Emily West) of Slavery and Emotions in the Atlantic World (2024).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009709453
• ISBN 13: 9781009709453
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 243