Dr Diana Paton
Reader in Caribbean History
- Email: diana.paton@ncl.ac.uk
- Telephone: 44 (191) 222 5038
- Address: School of Historical Studies
University of Newcastle
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
Dr Paton is a historian of the Caribbean, with particular interests in Jamaican history, Caribbean cultural history, comparative histories of slavery and emancipation, and gender history.
Research Interests
Caribbean history especially Jamaica; history of slavery and emancipation; gender history; comparative history of the Americas.
Current Work
My main current research is on the cultural history of obeah, a Caribbean creole spiritual healing practice that has been illegal for most of its history. My research examines competing constructions of obeah in law, medical knowledge, colonial discourse, and popular culture, using them as a window onto debates about race and nation in the region.
Selected Publications
- Diana Paton. Obeah Acts: Producing and Policing the Boundaries of Religion in the Caribbean. Small Axe 2009, 28, 1-18.
- Diana Paton and Jane Webster, ed. “Remembering Slave Trade Abolitions: Reflections on 2007 in International Perspective”. 2009.
- Diana Paton. An ‘injurious’ population: West Indian-Australian Transportation and the Politics of Race. Social and Cultural History 2008, 5(4), 449-464.
- Diana Paton. The Afterlives of Three-Fingered Jack. In: Brycchan Carey and Peter Kitson, ed. Slavery and the Culture of Abolition: Essays Marking the British Abolition Act of 1807 (Essays and Studies in Romanticism). Boydell and Brewer: London, 2007.
- Pamela Scully and Diana Paton (eds). Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
- Paton, Diana. No Bond but the Law : Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamaican State Formation, 1780-1870. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 2004.
Postgraduate Supervision
I welcome applications to work on any area of Caribbean history, and on histories of slavery and emancipation and/or gender history elsewhere in the Americas. I also welcome students interested in interdisciplinary Caribbean Studies.
Background
I did my first degree, in history, at Warwick University. I then went to Yale University to do a PhD, graduating in 2000. My dissertation, 'No Bond but the Law: Punishment and Justice in Jamaica's Age of Emancipation' was supervised by Emilia Viotti da Costa, Gilbert Joseph, and Nancy Cott.
Memberships
Chair, Society for Caribbean Studies 2002-2006
Treasurer Society for Caribbean Studies 2006-2008
Undergraduate Teaching
I teach the following modules, although not all of them run every year:
HIS1046: History of the Americas
HIS2034: The Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery
HIS2039: The Caribbean since 1898
HIS3001: The Haitian Revolution (special subject)
HIS3013: Slave Emancipation in the British Empire (special subject)
HIS3015: Post-Slave Societies in the British Empire (special subject)
HIS4006: Reading History
Postgraduate Teaching
MA History of the Americas
HIS8032: Slavery and Freedom