Dissertation Title:

The Power of Hunger: Atlantic Africa, The Middle Passage, and Jamaica, 1750–1832

My work illustrates how an Atlantic political economy of hunger fundamentally affected the forms and functions of capitalism, imperialism, and racism from the seventeenth century onward. In particular, I research how the transatlantic slave trade altered West African foodways and vice-versa. In turn, my work examines how these modified foodways reworked the social and economic structures of African and diasporic societies. Focusing on Lower Guinea and Jamaica, my dissertation shows how the politics of food and hunger shaped freedom and slavery in both Africa and the Caribbean during the Age of Revolutions.