Jennifer L. Morgan by Emily Charlton

Who is Jennifer L. Morgan?

charlton_e1 — 2024-11-19 16:33:35 UTC

Here is a picture of Jennifer L. Morgan so you can put a face to the name!

MacArthur Fellow Award Winner

charlton_e1 — 2024-11-19 16:58:57 UTC

Jennifer was made a MacArthur Fellow in 2024, as a historian whose work is focused on "Deepening understanding of how the exploitation of enslaved women enabled the institutionalization of race-based slavery in early America and the Black Atlantic." This link takes you to her MacArthur Fellow page, which gives a small overview of the work she has done and is continuing to work on.

Professor Morgan

charlton_e1 — 2024-11-19 17:00:39 UTC

This link takes you to the page dedicated to Jennifer Morgan, as she is a professor of Social & Cultural Analysis & History at NYU. It tells you her areas of research/interest, a short bio about her books and articles, as well as her current new research study and project in the works.

What's Missing

charlton_e1 — 2024-11-19 17:12:55 UTC

This was taken from Jennifer Morgan's MacArthur Page, but I think it does an excellent job of showcasing her creative trait of injecting new possibilities. Here it states that she uses a wide range of materials, but also is able to identify what is missing from them. This goes to show that she is able to inject new perspectives and infer new possibilities from things that are not blatantly stated or given to her.

Interview Collaboration

charlton_e1 — 2024-11-19 17:28:40 UTC

This is a hour and twenty minute long video conversation between Jennifer Morgan and Natasha Lightfoot on Morgan's Book "Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic." While I think this could also fall under the characteristic of preferring creative peers, but typically working alone, because she did write the book by herself, and is just discussing the book with someone else, I think it does a better job of talking about playing with ideas and concepts. The fact that she outlines three different concepts within her one book, and how they all intersect, helps to showcase her creative ability to make those connections across different concepts in order to bring to light new perspectives, biases, and possibilities on how institutions, such as slavery, might have actually been sustained, contrary or according to other popular beliefs.

Gender and Labor

charlton_e1 — 2024-11-19 17:44:33 UTC

3:30 - 23:24

In this episode, Jennifer Morgan discusses the concepts of gender and labor in regards to African American women in the early Americas. However, she is able to pick apart labor into multiple fields such as physical labor, but also the labor of enduring the constant assault and violence these women were unfortunately accustomed to. She is able to discuss and get those listening to think differently about how they view African American women as laborers vs women in the household, by bringing in gender roles and biases that are prevalent not only in records, but in people's everyday minds as well.

Q & A with Jennifer Morgan

charlton_e1 — 2024-11-19 17:56:16 UTC

In this quick Q & A interview with Jennifer Morgan discussing her book, she makes a comment that while she supports a certain stance that the origins of history should begin in 1619, rather than 1776, she also believes that they should take into account everything prior to 1619. In other words, all of the possibilities that could lead to new insights about how racial slavery started, could be found even further back than where most Americans are looking, hence why she has chosen a lot of research that draws on the lived experiences of enslaved African women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Therefore she is able to inject new possibilities about how the institution of trade, race, and slavery were formed and continued in the early Americas.

Published Work

charlton_e1 — 2024-11-19 18:19:30 UTC

This is the first of the published books from Jennifer L. Morgan, but what I loved from this particular website was in the summary of the book they used terms such as "Challenging conventional wisdom" or "Presenting a highly original, theoretically grounded view." In other words, Morgan is able to use her research in order to create new arguments that are original but yet grounded in proof and evidence from her research. She is able to bring new ideas to the table, even though the information she is gleaning from might already be known to others, yet she is able to create completely new theories that might counter other more well-known ideas.

Continuing Research

charlton_e1 — 2024-11-19 18:22:26 UTC

This is an excerpt from her MacArthur page, about what her new project and research is about, showcasing her continuing development and creativity to look deeper into the ins and outs of African American women, their lives, and the connection to the institution of race-based slavery in early America.

Reproduction & Capitalism

charlton_e1 — 2024-11-19 18:31:56 UTC

This is an article done by Jennifer Morgan and Alys Weinbaum, about the argument that racial capitalism is always reproductive. Not only that but they compare it to modern day reproductive crises that was happening in 2022 in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, where the constitutional right to abortion was taken away. So not only is she, as well as Weinbaum able to navigate the concepts of race, reproduction, and ethics, but they also are looking at it from two different timelines and how they intersect, compare, and the impacts that come from the early years of history.

The Measure of Their Sadness

charlton_e1 — 2024-11-19 18:52:36 UTC

This is a keynote speech Jennifer Morgan gave and it discusses two questions that came out of her research for writing her book "Reckoning of Slavery: Gender, Kindship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic." She processes out loud and showcases how she was able to use her interests in order to understand more deeply the topic of African American women in the early Black Atlantic. She revisits research done by herself and others and is able to showcase her new understanding and connections of materials to create foundational beliefs and theories about the structure of race, gender, and capitalism.