Charlene’s research explores the experiences of confined African-American women in Kentucky from Reconstruction to the Progressive Era, explicitly illuminating the lives of confined black women by examining places other than carceral locales as arenas of confinement, including mental health asylums and domestic spaces. She seeks to explore how these women defied and defined confinement through their incarceration, interactions with public, social, and political entities of the period, and how they challenged Victorian ideas of race and femininity and shaped prison and political reform in Kentucky. Charlene is determined to give voice to those silenced by the historical record, hoping that sharing these histories will foster healing in the 21st century and beyond.

Charlene’s second book project explores Italian migration and experiences in the Mississippi Delta between the late nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. It interrogates the Italian padrone system as a form of confinement and relationships between Italians and African Americans because of shared proximity and experience in the rural Jim Crow South.

Images courtesy of the Kentucky Historical Society and the Capital City Museum, Frankfort, Kentucky.

When we speak, we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. 
But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So, it is better to speak.” 
Audre Lorde

Research