We are pleased to announce Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean by Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy has been awarded the Outstanding Book Award of 2021 from the Disability History Association.

The Disability History Association described the book as as “an insightful and powerful study” that looks to early modern West Indian slavery and the legal exploitation of black bodies to argue that “slavery disabled the human.” It is “methodologically rich,” “elegantly and thoroughly researched, argued, and written,” and expands scholarly capacities for attending to the interconnections between disability and race. “From accounts framing monstrosity as an element of deformity to fitness tests at British slave markets, this study unravels the ways in which early modern ideas of race were tied to perceptions of disability — a systematic connection that, at its most effective, reverberated through slave laws that allowed for violence against the Black body.” It is “compelling, fascinating. An important contribution.” 

Congratulations Dr. Hunt-Kennedy!