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I am a historian of early America and the Caribbean, with particular interests in human trafficking, colonization, and illicit economies during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. My research and teaching focus on tracing the individuals who crossed imperial boundaries—by choice or coercion—to understand the processes of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and trade, and how these functions operated within the interstices of early modern empires. My book, titled 'Predatory Sea: Human Trafficking, Colonization, and Trade in the Greater Caribbean, 1570-1670,' forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press, analyzes the height of the sugar plantation complex in the Caribbean and traces how early modern racialized slavery emerged from practices of captive-taking and human trafficking. I aim to offer a full-length study of the deeply entangled histories of captivity and colonialism in the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Caribbean.
Cornell University • Ithaca, NY
Teaching and researching early American and Caribbean history.
Department of Architecture