Dr. Courtney Moore Taylor is a native North Carolinian. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in History from North Carolina Central University (1999) and her Master of Arts in American History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) (2003). Upon completing her MA, she taught in the African American Studies Program at UNCG. Resuming her studies in 2004 at the University of Florida, Taylor received her PhD in American History, with West African History as her minor field of study, in August 2010.
Her research interests center around the slavery experience during the antebellum period as it relates to enslaved African American females. Research projects include “My Presus Girl: The Rites of Passage for the Adolescent Female Slave in the Antebellum South, 1800-1861,” “Death in the Pot: The State versus Poll and Lavinia,” “Sacrificial Lambs: Infanticide and Its Implications Concerning American Slavery” and “Female Slave Violence in Antebellum North Carolina and Virginia.”
Taylor’s dissertation, entitled Free in Thought, Fettered in Action: Enslaved Adolescent Females In The Slave South, seeks to understand how enslaved adolescent females dealt with puberty while being deemed property. Focusing on antebellum Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia from 1800 to 1861, slavery’s most stable period, she reconstructs the rites of passage that enslaved females approaching adulthood experienced to argue that adolescent experience in work, dress, and sexual behavior decisively shaped slaves’ development and helped to form a culture of resistance as they moved toward adulthood.
Regarding her teaching experience, Dr. Moore Taylor has taught courses in both American History and African American Studies, classes include American History Survey Courses, Introduction to African American Studies and the African American Studies Senior Seminar. Prior to joining the African American Studies Faculty, Taylor served as a history professor at Santa Fe College.