Salons at Stowe: Agents of Their Own Emancipation

Salons at Stowe presents Ximena Abello Hurtado as a guest speaker for Âgents of Their Own Emancipation: Enslaved Women’s Letters to Colonial Governments. Abello Hurtado is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Mount Holyoke College whose research has taken her to archives in New Granada. There, she found letters written by enslaved Black women to the Spanish viceroyalty advocating for their freedom. Through these letters, Abello Hurtado explores how women were active agents of their own emancipation, despite numerous barriers of race, class, and limited literacy. Abello Hurtado shares their stories using their own words to explore the world in which these courageous women lived.