Classical Slave Names and Container Theory: An African American History
Emily Greenwood, Professor of the Classics and of Comparative Literature, Harvard University
The phenomenon of classical slave naming in the Americas is a rich site of study. In her iconic article “Venus in Two Acts”, Saidiya Hartman emphasized the extent to which recovering the history of those so named can be an exercise in “writing the impossible” since the classical names through which enslaved individuals enter the records are part of the apparatus of control.
The last decade has seen important work in the study of classical slave names in the Americas and slave naming in classical antiquity. This talk will consider these names as containers, focusing on the classical slave names in free Black communities to pose new questions about the dynamics of classical slave naming and how these names could become repurposed as containers for new identities.