Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition Yale University, New Haven, CT Newsletter for March 30, 2015
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
Yale University, New Haven, CT
Newsletter for March 30, 2015
Best regards,
David Spatz
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In this newsletter:
1. GLC Upcoming Events
· Michael LeMahieu Brown Bag Lecture (4/8)
· Eric Foner in Conversation with David Blight (4/13)
· GLC Spring Programs
2. Programs and Events
· Slavery, Freedom, and the Remaking of American History: A Conference in Honor of Ira Berlin (4/9-10)
· “Ghosts of Slavery: The Afterlives of Racial Bondage”: The W&M Lemon Project Spring Symposium, April 10-11, 2015
· Conference: José Antonio Aponte: Writing, Painting, and Making Freedom in the African Diaspora (5/8-9)
· The Antislavery Usable Past Postgraduate Research Network
3. In the News
· Eric Foner on Why Reconstruction Matters
· Greg Grandin and Sven Beckert Win the 2015 Bancroft Prizes
· Leslie Harris on the history of racism at US universities
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GLC Upcoming Events
Wednesday, April 8, 2015. 12:00 pm
“Genres of Civil War Memory in Literature after Brown v. Board of Education”
Michael LeMahieu, Associate Professor of English, Clemson University
Location: 230 Prospect St., Room 101
While
the sesquicentennial commemoration of the American Civil War has
sparked a renewed interest in the literature of the period, the ongoing
role of Civil War memory in literature written during the civil rights
movement has received less attention. After identifying four genres of
Civil War memory that post-1954 American writers simultaneously work
within and against, this talk discusses how texts by Flannery O’Connor,
Carson McCullers, and Gwendolyn Brooks counter the chivalric romance of Gone With the Wind
in the context of the desegregation of public education. This talk is
part of the GLC Brown Bag Lunch Series. Bring your lunch and we'll
provide the drinks & dessert.
Michael
LeMahieu is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Pearce
Center for Professional Communication at Clemson University. He is the
author of Fictions of Fact and Value: The Erasure of Logical Positivism in American Literature, 1945-1975 (Oxford, 2013) and co-editor of the journal Contemporary Literature. His articles and reviews have appeared in African American Review, American Studies, Modernism/Modernity, and Twentieth-Century Literature.
During the Spring 2015 term, he is Visiting Faculty Fellow at the
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and
Abolition at Yale.
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Monday April 13, 2015.
“Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad”
Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University
Location: Linsly-Chittendon Hall, 63 High Street, Room 102
GLC
Director David Blight sits down with Eric Foner, two-time Bancroft
Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, to discuss his new book, Gateway to Freedom, about the Underground Railroad in New York.
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Gilder Lerhman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
Spring 2015 Programs
Wednesday, April 8, 2015. 12:00 pm
Michael LeMahieu, Associate Professor of English, Clemson University
Location: 230 Prospect St., Room 101
Monday April 13, 2015. 4:30pm
Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University
Location: Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 102
Wednesday, May 6, 2015. 12:00 pm
Yuko Miki, Assistant Professor of History, Fordham University
Location: 230 Prospect St., Room 101
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Programs and Events
Slavery, Freedom, and the Remaking of American History: A Conference in Honor of Ira Berlin
April 9-10, 2015
McKeldin Library Special Events Room (6137)
University of Maryland, College Park.
Details and full schedule at: https://www.arhu.umd.edu/events/slavery-freedom-and-remaking-american-history-conference-honor-ira-berlin
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“Ghosts of Slavery: The Afterlives of Racial Bondage”
The W&M Lemon Project Spring Symposium
April 10-11, 2015
The fifth annual Lemon Project Spring Symposium, “Ghosts of Slavery: The Afterlives of Racial Bondage,” will take place on the evening of Friday, April 10th and during the day on Saturday, April 11th, 2015 at the College of William and Mary in Williams-burg, Virginia. Research presentations will be given on April 11th. “The Lemon Project is a multifaceted and dynamic attempt to rectify wrongs perpetrated against African Americans by the College through action or inaction.” This symposium is an opportunity for scholars and non-scholars to come together to share research and discuss ideas related to the afterlives of racial slavery. Central to the symposium’s concerns is how to commemorate and confront a “past” that is profoundly present in the sense that its effects have yet to end and seemingly are made anew. The symposium also invites participants to grapple with the vexing question of how to repair the ongoing losses and wreckages to black life left in racial slavery’s aftermath. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Jody L. Allen at jlalle@wm.edu.
The Symposium is free, and includes a free lunch, with registration.
More information at: http://www.wm.edu/sites/lemonproject/symposium/index.php
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José Antonio Aponte and His World
Writing, Painting, and Making Freedom in the African Diaspora
Date: May 8-9, 2015
Location: New York University, King Juan Carlos Center,
53 Washington Square South, Auditorium
Location: New York University, King Juan Carlos Center,
53 Washington Square South, Auditorium
Over
the past fifteen years, scholars have shown a renewed interest in the
political and historical legacy of José Antonio Aponte (?-1812), a free
man of color, carpenter, artist, and alleged leader of a massive
antislavery conspiracy and rebellion in colonial Cuba in 1811-1812.
Aponte was also the creator of an unusual work of art—a “book of
paintings” full of historical and mythical figures, including black
kings, emperors, priests, and soldiers that he showed to and discussed
with fellow conspirators. Aponte’s vision of a black history connected a
diasporic and transatlantic past to the possibility of imagining a
sovereign future for free and enslaved people of color in colonial Cuba.
Although the “book of paintings” is believed to be lost, colonial
Spanish officials interrogated Aponte about its contents after arresting
him for organizing the rebellions, and Aponte’s sometimes elaborate,
always elusive, descriptions of the book’s pages survive in the textual
archival record.
From
myriad locations in the humanities, historians, anthropologists,
philosophers, literary scholars, and art historians have explored the
figure of Aponte as artist, intellectual, revolutionary, and theorist.
In addition to this scholarly interest, Aponte has also been
re-enshrined as a national figure in contemporary Cuba, following a 2012
bicentennial that commemorated his death at the hands of colonial
authorities. However, given the recent scholarly and public focus on
Aponte, there has not yet been a conference dedicated to the
interdisciplinary scholarly perspectives that have sought to advance the
study of the singular “book of paintings” and its visionary creator.
“José
Antonio Aponte and His World: Writing, Painting, and Making Freedom in
the African Diaspora” brings together scholars to discuss the current
state of “Apontian” studies and suggest future directions for
scholarship. It includes, as well, scholars doing work on questions of
historical memory, the intellectual history of the enslaved, and the
relationship between text, image, and politics in other settings in
order to put Aponte’s history in conversation with a wider world, much,
indeed, as his own “book of paintings” tried to do.
~
More information: https://aponteconference.wordpress.com/
For the program, click here.
To register for the conference, please click here.
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Call for all postgraduate students of slavery and antislavery
The Antislavery Usable Past Postgraduate Research Network
This new network will
bring together postgraduate students of historic or contemporary slavery
and antislavery studies from across the humanities and social sciences.
An annual workshop will create research and learning networks; provide
opportunities to debate current topics in the field; and provide a
supportive environment where postgraduates can establish valuable
contacts for the future.
The Antislavery Usable
Past is a five year project (2014-19) funded by the Arts and Humanities
Research Council (AHRC) under its ‘Care for the Future’ theme. It will
unearth the details of past antislavery strategies and translate their
lessons and legacies for today’s movement against global slavery and
human trafficking. It includes Professors and scholars at the
Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE)
at the University of Hull, the University of Nottingham and Queens
University Belfast.
For the first workshop, to be held at WISE on 16-17 October 2015,
we are pleased to invite doctoral students to submit proposals for
papers, of no more than 300 words, on the theme: ‘Antislavery lessons
and legacies’. The deadline for submissions is 31 May 2015.
The organisers welcome
research that ranges geographically and temporally, and which
encourages interdisciplinary conversations. For this first workshop,
priority will be given to researchers of antislavery, historic and
modern.
The workshop will
include introductions from Professor John Oldfield, Director of WISE,
and Professor Kevin Bales, antislavery activist and scholar. Professor
David Blight, Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of
Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University will offer a series
of reflections. There will also be an evening film event from the
anti-trafficking charity, Unchosen.
Network members will be encouraged to form their own committee, and to formulate future workshop themes.
Funding will be provided for UK travel, one nights’ accommodation, and meals.
To
submit a proposal, to express an interest in joining the network, or
for any further information, please contact Sarah Colley, s.colley@hull.ac.uk.
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In the News
Why Reconstruction Matters
THE
surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House,
150 years ago next month, effectively ended the Civil War. Preoccupied
with the challenges of our own time, Americans will probably devote
little attention to the sesquicentennial of Reconstruction, the
turbulent era that followed the conflict. This is unfortunate, for if
any historical period deserves the label “relevant,” it is
Reconstruction.
Issues
that agitate American politics today — access to citizenship and voting
rights, the relative powers of the national and state governments, the
relationship between political and economic democracy, the proper
response to terrorism — all of these are Reconstruction questions. But
that era has long been misunderstood.
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Winners of the 2015 Bancroft Prize Announced
Columbia University
NEW
YORK, March 25, 2015 – Columbia University announced today that two
acclaimed works will be awarded the 2015 Bancroft Prize – Sven Beckert’s
Empire of Cotton and Greg Grandin’s The Empire of Necessity. Both are books about slavery.
Read more: http://library.columbia.edu/news/libraries/2015/2015-03-25_Winners_of_the_2015_Bancroft.html
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The Long, Ugly History of Racism at American Universities
By Leslie M. Harris
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Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of
Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
Yale University
PO Box 208206
New Haven, CT 06520-8206
Phone: 203-432-3339 ~ Fax: 203-432-6943
Website: www.yale.edu/glc
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