Kathryn Olivarius, “Disease, Immunity, and Belonging in the Cotton Kingdom,” in conversation with Grant Parker

Antebellum New Orleans sat at the heart of America’s slave and cotton kingdoms. But it was also the nation’s "necropolis," with epidemic yellow fever killing thousands each summer and leaving countless more orphaned, widowed, and bereaved. Olivarius shows how this city became stratified between the "acclimated" and "unacclimated", why these immunity labels mattered, and how yellow fever was mobilized by white elites to further divide and exploit the population.

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