2026 Theses Doctoral

Unfree Artists on the Borders of U.S. Empire, 1850-1930

Williams, Ashley E.

The U.S. empire was built by unfree labor—a range of experiences including slavery, indentured servitude, debt peonage, incarceration, wartime imprisonment, and more. Despite the fact that a plethora of art and material culture objects were made under these conditions, unfree artists remain overlooked and understudied in the discipline of art history. Though scholars of U.S. art history have led the way in beginning to explore these depths, existing studies focus on enslaved artists. There has been little study of artists working in other forms of exploitation, such as incarceration, nor has there been an attempt to link different unfree conditions together.

This dissertation provides the first comparative analysis of unfree artistic labor, with a focus on the intersections of unfree making and colonialism from the final years of formal slavery in the 1850s to the creation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons in 1930. My case studies reside at the expanding edges of U.S. empire: from stoneware vessels made by enslaved potters in Texas, to drawings made by Kiowa and Southern Cheyenne prisoners of war in Florida in the 1870s, to rattan chairs woven by incarcerated men in the Philippines in the early twentieth century. These objects trouble assumptions about artistic freedom and authorship.

Ultimately, I argue that systems of unfree artistic labor have been leveraged to control racialized populations, support imperial expansion, and produce cheaper commodities. Even so, makers have found ways to express their agency, humanity, and refusal. My analysis draws from deep engagement with objects and archives, as well as consultations with descendants. Situating these case studies within their contemporary reverberations reveals just how deeply these histories and exploitative labor systems continue to impact our present.