Beatrice Arduini
University of Washington
Slavery was an abhorrent yet consistent practice across the Mediterranean world from the Greco-Roman to modern periods. However, though slavery persisted in a number of European countries throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, premodern slavery has not received as much scholarly attention as the transatlantic slave trade. Given this gap, a non-specialist reader might believe that from the sixteenth century onward, the sole form of Western European slavery was the trade of enslaved Africans to the American continent. This vacancy in the literature perpetuates the problematic and ahistorical erasure of enslaved peoples staining European cultural studies.
Italian domestic slavery lasted for centuries and survives today in some forms. It was a forced migration of thousands from the Eurasian continent to Italy for financial gain, exacting a lasting and devastating toll on trafficked domestic slaves. Yet, this major cultural phenomenon has remained a “minor episode” within academic studies partially due to the scattered, piecemeal nature of its primary sources: deeds of sale, enfranchisements, wills, ledgers of foundling hospitals, bills of landing of trading-ships, court records and judgments, and city statutes. Within historical studies, premodern Mediterranean slavery still remains largely absent from the history of Italian literature, since “displaced persons” are mostly documented in private letters, diaries, and account-books rather than poetry collections. Canonical Italian authors, such as Petrarch, do reference “domestici hostes,” but quickly dismiss these people as domestic enemies; untrustworthy and yet present in nearly every Italian household, simultaneously familiar and alien. A digital repository is needed to weave together these disparate threads of both the secondary and primary sources. This online platform will include (but is not limited to): a digital census of primary and secondary sources to be developed into a searchable database of depictions of domestic slavery, an interactive timeline, a virtual exhibit including interpretations of representations of slaves in paintings and frescoes, a rolling database of searchable key terms to organize information about different kinds of slavery in Italy, and teaching resources for both online, hybrid, and in-person cultural studies courses. I, for example, will integrate aspects of my research such as my editing and translation project of Alessandro Braccesi’s mid fifteenth-century sonnets wherein the poet imitated in writing the way female domestic slaves spoke. My project aims to build the basic digital infrastructures of and begin the process of adding primary sources to an interdisciplinary, public-facing WordPress website focused on the topic of domestic slavery in the medieval and early modern periods. This online platform will include (but is not limited to): a digital census of primary and secondary sources to be developed into a searchable database of depictions of domestic slavery, an interactive timeline, a virtual exhibit including interpretations of representations of slaves in paintings and frescoes, a rolling database of searchable key terms to organize information about different kinds of slavery in Italy, and teaching resources for both online, hybrid, and in-person cultural studies courses.