Wilbourne, Emily - Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence

Features new archival work documenting the presence of enslaved and racially-marked individuals in seventeenth-century Italy
• Integrates historical facts and data with a critical-theoretical analytic that considers the consequences of early modern slavery at an epistemological and historiographical level
• Includes sound, music, and the voice in the history of race and race in the history of Western classical music

Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence argues for the power of sound -- particularly musical and vocal sounds -- to systems of racial and ethnic difference. Foregrounding newly discovered archival sources, Emily Wilbourne documents the significant presence of foreign and racially-marked individuals in Medici Florence, many of whom were living under conditions of slavery or unfree labor. This book considers how the musical and verbal sounds of these individuals were recruited to represent or communicate access to subjectivity, agency, and voice.