A History of the Enslaved Black Family

Co-presented with the UCLA Department of History and UCLA Department of African American Studies

Dr. Brenda Stevenson, UCLA Nickoll Family Endowed Professor of American History and Professor of African American Studies, and UC Santa Barbara Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts, Dr. Daina Ramey Berry, examine themes detailed in Stevenson’s new book, What Sorrows Labour in My Parent’s Breast? A History of the Enslaved Black Family. The book centers on the loss, recovery, resilience, and resistance embedded in the desire of African and African-descended people to experience family life despite their enslavement.

Dr. Brenda E. Stevenson is the Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair of Women’s History at Oxford and the Nickoll Family Endowed Chair of History at UCLA. Her previous works include What is Slavery? and the prize-winning monographs Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South and The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender and the Origins of the L.A. Riots.

Dr. Daina Ramey Berry is the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Berry is an historian, a “scholar of the enslaved,” and a specialist on gender and slavery as well as Black women’s history in the United States. She is the award-winning author/editor of six books. Her most recent publication, A Black Women’s History of the United States, co-authored with Kali Nicole Gross, is an empowering testament of Black women’s ability to build communities in the face of oppression, and their continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism. Professor Berry completed her BA, MA, and PhD in African American Studies and U.S. History at the University of California Los Angeles.