Abigail Cooper

My current work examines the world of ritual and revival and its meaning for political awakening in Black refugee or "contraband camps" of the American Civil War. These camps were known as "contraband camps" because African Americans were considered to be between slavery and freedom as "confiscated contraband property" in U.S.-controlled territory across the South. This project elucidates the possibilities and complications of Black spiritual creativity in these camps for kinship formation and postwar political participation. It reckons with "religion" as a dynamic and precarious mediating force between the enslaved and the state at the end of slavery. And it penetrates the question "Who belongs and how?" for those negotiating statelessness and peoplehood in the midst of their self-emancipation. For more on my graduate students, research, courses, and media, click on my webpage.