BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:icalendar-ruby CALSCALE:GREGORIAN X-WR-CALNAME:The Price of Virginity: Enslaved Women's Property Claims\, Sex uality\, and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Cuba X-WR-TIMEZONE:Pacific Time (US & Canada) BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260617T124040Z UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_52313750830682 DTSTART:20260417T203000Z DTEND:20260417T213000Z DESCRIPTION:This event is co-sponsored by The Cuba Observatory. \n\nThis pr esentation analyzes a rare corpus of deflowering (estupro) lawsuits filed by enslaved women and compares them with similar suits filed by free women in nineteenth-century Cuba. Estupro accusations traditionally protected f ree women’s standing\, or honor\, in their communities. Free women’s h onor depended on a contextually defined combination of lineage membership and sexual behavior. When deflowered\, free unmarried women and their fami lies lost their honor and could file sexual crime accusations against the men responsible for the act for compensation. Barred from criminal jurisdi ction and denied honor (because they allegedly lacked lineage)\, enslaved women took their cases to civil courts as property disputes: they asked th at defendants provide manumission monies in return for their virginity. \n \nThe plaintiffs advanced a novel legal strategy: they reframed sexual int imacy as labor and asserted property rights in their reproductive selves. They also tried to upend the association of honor from lineage\, linking i t instead to property and contractual obligations. Rare (or even unique) w ithin Latin America\, these lawsuits likely arose as part of the unprecede nted levels of monetization of slave labor in nineteenth-century Cuba. Whi le the courts seldom granted relief\, the litigation nonetheless generated enduring knowledge of the economic worth of feminized labor that persiste d into Black women’s post-emancipation era calls for wages for housework .\n\nAdriana Chira is the Winship Distinguished Research Professor of Hist ory and an Associate Professor of History at Emory University. She works o n slavery\, law\, emancipation\, and recently consent in Cuba and Latin Am erica. She is the author of Patchwork Freedom: Slavery\, Law\, and Race be yond Cuba's Plantations (2022)\, which won the James Rawley Prize for Atla ntic World History from The American Historical Association\, the Peter Go nville Stein Prize for best book in non-US legal history from the American Society for Legal History\, the Outstanding First Book Prize from the Ass ociation for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora\, and the Elsa Go veia Prize for excellence in Caribbean history from the Association of Car ibbean Historians. \n\nClick here for YouTube Livestream link. GEO:37.422017;-122.165624 LOCATION:Bolivar House SUMMARY:The Price of Virginity: Enslaved Women's Property Claims\, Sexualit y\, and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Cuba URL;VALUE=URI:https://events.stanford.edu/event/the-price-of-virginity-ensl aved-womens-property-claims-sexuality-and-the-law-in-nineteenth-century-cu ba CATEGORIES:Lecture/Presentation/Talk END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR