My thesis is supervised by Professors Tim Lockley (Warwick) and Sergio Lussana (Nottingham Trent). My research explores the intersections between masculinity, physical health and ability, as well as disability for enslaved men in the U.S. South. In particular, my research focuses on how disability, from birth, sickness, injury, or old age, may have impacted an enslaved man’s sense of self, as well as their position within contexts such as labour roles and the enslaved community. This work is framed within the wider context of nineteenth century abolitionist and white Southern societal beliefs about an enslaved man’s ability to truly ‘be a man.’ This work also discusses physicality within the broader context of Antebellum medical research and wider Southern social thought which often codified black men as ‘brutish’ and very physically strong in comparison to white men.