Linda M. Rupert,

Please note: Linda has left the "History" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.

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Education:

MA	Duke	2002
MA	New School for Social Research	1988
BA	Brandeis University	1979

Specialties:

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Research Interests: early modern Atlantic and Caribbean; colonial Americas; comparative slavery

Current projects: Dissertation: International Trade and Local Identity in the Colonial Atlantic: Curacao, 1675-1791

How did the motley crew of men and women who lived in colonial port cities shape processes of globalization, creolization, and the formation of new colonial identities in the early modern Atlantic world? What types of ties did merchants, sailors, and their families form across assumed barriers of social class, race/ethnicity, gender, and language, as well as across geographic and geopolitical boundaries? My dissertation addresses these questions with particular reference to the Caribbean island of Curaçao under the rule of the second Dutch West India Company (1675-1791). I am analyzing the interconnected lives and inter-imperial trade patterns of Curaçao's varied inhabitants, especially up-and-coming Sephardic Jewish merchants and seafarers of African descent (enslaved and free) and their families, tracing their interactions both in Curaçao’s port city of Willemstad and along Caribbean trade routes, particularly with the northern littoral of nearby mainland South America.

Keywords:

empires • colonialism • slavery • Atlantic studies • Caribbean • early modern trade • creolization

Curriculum Vitae