“She Will Be Quite a Manager”: From Plantation Owner to Girl Boss

What do a Civil War-era plantation owner and a modern “girl boss” have in common? More than you think.

Adelicia Acklen and Dorothy Thomas were two of the most powerful plantation-owning women—one in the US South and the other in South America—but both wielded the power of ownership by deploying and playing on particular ideas of femininity. This talk hosted by Carolina Public Humanities traces their unsettling legacy into the present, asking what happens when women gain power within systems built on inequality.

Free, but space is limited; registration is required via the Carolina Public Humanities event webpage.

About the speaker:

Tanya Shields is an Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies whose research focuses on Caribbean studies and plantation logics. She teaches courses on the Caribbean, the arts of activism, growing up girls globally, and the continuing influence of plantation economics and politics. She is currently working on her second monograph, Gendered Labor: Race, Place, and Power on Female-Owned Plantations, a comparative study of women who owned plantations in the Caribbean and the U.S. South.