Elise Mitchell

"Morbid Geographies: Enslavement, Epidemics, and Embodiment in the Early Modern Atlantic World" is a book project that uses the social and cultural history of smallpox as a lens for examining how enslaved Africans and their descendants experienced and contended with the consequences of enslavement and colonialism in the multi-imperial early modern Atlantic World. The racial and gender ideologies borne of Spanish, Portuguese, French, and British colonization, slavery, and slave trades placed enslaved Africans at risk of disease. Disease manifested and materialized the aggregate consequences of enslavement and colonialism on the body, within social, spiritual, and geopolitical ties, and, ultimately, had an indelible impact on enslaved Africans voyages to and throughout the Americas between 1500 and 1800. "Smallpox and Slavery in the Early Modern Atlantic World: A Digital History" is a project mapping the spread of smallpox among enslaved Africans in the early modern Atlantic World and a digital companion to the book.