After four full years, the initial funded stage of Medicine and the Making of Race comes to a close in September 2025. To mark its completion, we are delighted to announce our capstone conference, Medicine, Slavery, and Race in the Atlantic World, which will take place 15-17th May 2025 here at King’s College London.
Since the seminal work of Todd Savitt and Sharla Fett, scholarship on the relationship between slavery and medicine has been a longstanding subject of historical inquiry. Recent years have seen this work pick up pace, with critical contributions from Rana Hogarth, Suman Seth, Andrew Curran, and a recent collection of essays edited by Sean Morey Smith & Christopher Willoughby.
This scholarship has situated medicine more specifically in the realm of ‘race-making’ with attention to the role of disease in racialisation, to anatomy and theories of “Blackness”, and to biopower and the politics of medicine as an Enlightenment project. The purview of medicine, slavery, and race-making now covers both its contribution to emerging theories of race, but also its racializing practices, which established enduring patterns of inequality and injustice in the provision of treatment and care. The aim of this conference is to bring together those working specifically on medicine, and its relationship with race and/or slavery, in the broadest remit of the Atlantic World.
Some possible subjects may include
Disease and “race-medicine”
Childbirth, reproductive (in)justice, and maternal treatment
Medical professionals and practices of enslavement
Botany, pharmacy and the politics of drug culture
Anatomy and the epidermalization of race
Race-making and climate
Confirmed speakers include: Simon Buck, Zachary Dorner, Teresa Göltl, Vicki Heath, Mary Hicks, Katherine Paugh, Melissa Reynolds, Megan Roberts, Sarah Maria Schober, Suman Seth, Kevin Siena, Sasha Turner, & Claire Weeda.
We are adopting a flexible format for this event, which will include a mix of traditional conference presentations (panels with three speakers and 20 minute papers), longer lectures, and shorter lightning talks for ECRS. Our hope is that this will allow for scholars at different career stages, but also at different stages of research, to participate in a way that best suits their need.
A CFP will appear in the New Year. Our project will cover the cost of travel and accommodation for all speakers. Attendance is free and registration will open in Spring 2025.