Shannon C. Eaves
College of Charleston
Professor – African American History
Shannon C. Eaves earned her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and currently serves as an Assistant Professor of African American History here at the College of Charleston. She is a specialist in 19thcentury U.S. History, African American History, and Slavery and Gender in the Antebellum South. She most recently served as the 2017-2018 Race and Gender Postdoctoral Fellow at Rutgers University. Her current book project Illicit Intercourse: How the Sexual Exploitation of Enslaved Women Shaped the Antebellum South inserts enslaved women, rape, and sexual exploitation into the center of scholarly debates on the Slave South’s system of power and culture. This study illustrates the processes by which rape and sexualized violence and the trauma that ensued resulted in a Rape Culture that became woven into the very fabric of the plantation complex, influencing daily life for the enslaved and slaveholders alike.