This book looks at examples of the physical depiction of slaves, from the ancient and medieval worlds and from slave societies of more recent times in the Americas and the Caribbean.

How the bodies of slaves are pictured in art and written or spoken about is revealing of the attitudes of those who were depicting them, often with the intention of influencing the attitudes of others. Slaves could be presented as inferior to free people, and almost subhuman. Conversely, emphasis could be laid upon their essential humanity and even nobility. This book looks at examples of the physical depiction of slaves, from the ancient and medieval worlds and from slave societies of more recent times in the Americas and the Caribbean. Pictures, literature and documentary accounts by former slaves present different views of the slave. Only in some of these is a colour factor; rather, it is the status of the slave that makes the difference.

Introduction, Thomas Wiedemann and Jane Gardner. Part 1 The
ancient world: inverted "kalokagathia", Ingomar Weiler
seeing things - examining the body of the slave in Greek medicine, Niall McKeown
slave disguise in ancient Rome, Michele George. Part 2 Between ancient and modern: representing the slave's body in Ottoman society, Ehud R. Toledano
the image of the slave in some Anglo-Saxon and Norse sources, David Pelteret. Part 3 North American and Caribbean slavery: "arms like polished iron" - the black slave boy in narratives in a slave ship revolt, Celeste-Marie Bernier
"an outrage on all
decency" - abolitionist reactions to flogging Jamaican slave women, 1780-1834, Henrice Altink
customs and costumes - Carlos Juliao and the image of black slaves in late 18th-century Brazil, Silvia Hunold Lara
African Abrahams, Lucretias and men of sorrows - allegory and allusion in the Brazilian anti-slavery lithographs (1827-1835) of Johann Moritz Rugendas, Robert W. Slenes
Brazilian slaves represented in their own words, Robert Krueger.