Tracing Milk Lines: Cross-Racial Wet Nursing in the Antebellum South
When and Where
Description
Join us for the first talk in our 2025-26 NFC Doctoral Fellow Lecture Series, with NFC Doctoral Fellow Stephanie Borkowsky.
About the event...
Tracing Milk Lines: Cross-Racial Wet Nursing in the Antebellum South explores the intimate and complicated relationships between enslaved wet nurses, their biological children, and the white infants they were forced to nourish. Join Stephanie Borkowsky, a PhD candidate in the department of History, as she shares archival stories of maternal love, loss, and survival, and examines how these bonds shaped ideas of motherhood, family, freedom, and racial difference in the antebellum South.
About the speaker...
Stephanie Borkowsky is a PhD candidate in the Department of History with a collaborative specialization in Food Studies. Her dissertation examines the lives of wet nurses in 19th century United States history, tracing how these women navigated the institutions, relationships, and social beliefs which shaped their experience of motherhood and (un)freedom. Stephanie is the former President of the Graduate Association for Food Studies and current Managing Editor at Gastronomica. She holds a BA in History from McGill University and an MA in Food Studies from New York University.
All are welcome; registration available via Eventbrite.
