Shauna Sweeney

Areas of Interest

• Slavery and Emancipation
• Gender and Slavery
• Histories of Capitalism
• Gender and Reproduction
• Caribbean History
• Atlantic World History
• Environmental History

I welcome applications from graduate students interested in the following topics: Race and Gender in the Caribbean, Slavery and Emancipation in the Atlantic World, Gender and the Economy, Racial Capitalism, Art and Culture in the African Diaspora, Afro-Diasporic Religion and Spirituality.

Biography

Shauna Sweeney is an assistant professor of Women and Gender Studies and History at the University of Toronto.  She is a historian of the African Diaspora, specializing in the interrelated histories of gender, economy, slavery, and emancipation in the Caribbean.

She is currently finishing her first book, A Free Enterprise: Market Women, Insurgent Economies and the Making of Caribbean Freedom, which examines the licit and illicit economies of enslaved and free people of African descent, especially free and enslaved market women, in Jamaica and the wider the Atlantic world. Shauna’s work has appeared in The William and Mary Quarterly, American Quarterly, and Social Text.

Education

PhD, New York University 

MA, New York University 

MA, University of Toronto 

BA, University of Toronto 

Selected Works

“Market Marronage: Fugitive Women and Jamaica’s Internal Marketing System, 1781-1834″ William & Mary Quarterly vol. 76, no.2, April 2019, 197-222. 

Honours and Awards

Teaching

Undergraduate Courses:

Making Knowledge in a World that Matters (Women and Gender Studies)

Climate Change and Colonialism (History)

Capitalism & Slavery (History)

Graduate Courses:

Gendering Racial Capitalism (Women’s and Gender Studies)