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Assistant Professor
(On leave, Fall 2009)
Office: Herter 715
Telephone: (413) 545-6789
Fax: (413) 545-6137
E-mail: barbarak@history.umass.edu
Degree: Ph.D., Princeton (2000)
Field(s) of interest: US: Antebellum, slavery and emancipation, African American history, Native American history.
Research Interests and Professional Activities
Professor Krauthamer's main area of research interest is the history of slavery and emancipation in the Americas. She is currently revising a manuscript on the transition from slavery to freedom in Texas and the Indian Territory. This study examines African Americans’ family and community life during the era of emancipation in the U.S. borderlands. Rather than focusing solely on freed slaves’ political participation or labor relations with former masters, this study attempts to understand the multiple meanings of freedom that developed in freedpeople’s relationships and conflicts with each other. This concentration on family and community life, furthermore, places the lives of freedwomen and children at the center of the study and illuminates the ways in which gender identity shaped conceptions of freedom.
Future projects include a study of African Americans’ contact and relationships with Native Americans during the first half of the nineteenth century. Specifically, this work will explore the ways in which enslaved and free blacks formulated ideas about racial, cultural and national identity as a consequence of their proximity to and involvement with Native American communities. Another project will trace the cultural implications of the post-1808 illegal international slave trade into the United States and the flight of some enslaved African Americans to the Caribbean and Latin America.
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