Centring Blackness: A Focus on Gender and Critical Approaches Through Black Women's Lives

Abstract

I relish the different approaches used by scholars to centre blackness in the historical conversation, none more so than those demonstrated by the esteemed contributors of this reflection. The diversity of these approaches testifies to the growing significance of centring blackness in early-modern Black Atlantic and European history. Yet I believe the key to centring ideas of blackness in the early-modern period lies in examining lived experiences, with an emphasis upon black agency, reassessing the limitations of black historical materials and examining the intersection of race, gender, and class, following in the footsteps of Walter Johnson, Saidya Hartman, Gretchen Grezina and more. 1 These three focuses will help scholars create the 'new maps that fully engage with the differentiated understandings of class, of labour, of gender and of race …'. 2 It is established that the idea of blackness, as a derivative of the ideas of race, is a 'product of the mind' not nature, and it manifests through individuals, relationships,