Sourcing early American archives of rebellion

Marley Lix-Jones is an Advisory Council Dissertation Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University. Her dissertation, "Disturbed Districts: Contests over Community and Land During Slave Rebellions in the Greater Caribbean," uses the archive of slave rebellions to examine the intimate values and social connections of enslaved people across the Caribbean and Lower South.

Lix-Jones explains that she was drawn to early American studies because "I found the idea of doing historical work unbounded by international borders quite exciting. I was also excited to learn about the kind of mobility of people and ideas that is central to the history of early America."

"I was brought to my research topic through an interest in understanding what people of color thought of slave rebellions and how they reacted to them," says Lix-Jones. "As an undergraduate, I researched how elite free people of color responded to the Baptist War in Jamaica. Through my graduate training, my project has evolved to ask the question: What can archives of rebellion tell us about the intimate lives of enslaved people?"

Lix-Jones looks to writers outside the field of early American studies to enhance her understanding of her research. "I have been reading a diary of a missionary recently. Every once in a while it offers strikingly detailed depictions of the intimate lives of enslaved people. I am finding it a great antidote to the sources that were created to describe and/or justify violence against enslaved people, which are the bulk of what was produced following slave rebellions."

Read more at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.