This roundtable brings together scholars from a range of career stages to assess a landmark work of scholarship. In 1996 Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia announced a major turning point in the scholarship on slavery. Centering women's lives, gender non-conforming people, and the gendered nature of slavery, Kathleen M. Brown showed just how much scholars had missed by not attending to gender in their analysis of colonial Virgina, and the origins of slavery. Thirty years later, the monograph is still having its impact: it is regularly taught at the undergraduate and graduate level.

This roundtable discussion will begin with Sharon Block's presentation on the book's initial publication and reception. Offering a historical snapshot of its publication origin, Block will trace the kinds of scholarship that flourished thanks to Brown's pathbreaking work. The two subsequent presentations will look at how Brown's work relates to very contemporary conversations about the archives of the enslaved and racial capitalism. Ariela Gross will explore how Brown's work helps scholars debate the presence or absence of enslaved people in the archives, weighing in on the debate over the voices of the enslaved in the legal archives. Ultimately she will offer a reading of the text that tells us about the constructions of racial categories through legal archives. Building on this analysis Halle-Mackenzie Ashby will engage with Brown's theorization of gender's relationship to slavery to talk about how it can contribute to ongoing work on racial capitalism. Specifically looking at reproduction and exploitation, Ashby's paper will grapple with the multiple levels of violence in slavery that Good Wives and Nasty Wenches revealed in its analysis. Finally, Sarah Pearsall will discuss the role of this book in the classroom. Talking about her own experiences reading the book as a graduate student, and teaching it to current students, her paper will focus on the life of this brilliant, unsettling book in the classroom.

Marisa Fuentes will serve as chair of the panel.

Kathleen Brown will attend and offer a response.

Each presenter will be limited to ten minutes to allow ample time for questions and conversation.

More than one generation of scholars has grappled with, learned from, and engaged with Good Wives and Nasty Wenches. The panel will therefore have broad appeal to scholars of slavery, gender, the colonial United States, and historical methodology.