Slavery Seminar
Created in the Spring 2012 by Dr. Ana Lucia Araujo (Professor, Department of History) this seminar is a forum for discussion of scholarship on the history and memory of slavery and their connections with the African diaspora. Prior to the meetings, the seminar papers were circulated (via email) among the participants. When the global pandemic of COVID-19 started in 2020, the seminar moved online and returned in an hybrid format in the Fall 2023.
In the Fall 2024, after twelve years of existence, the Howard University Department of History the Seminar "Slavery, Memory, and African Diasporas" was redesigned and has now a new format. Co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Moorland Spingarn Research Center, the seminar now consists of five to six in-person public talks and book discussions with scholars working in the field of slavery and African diaspora.
To be added to the seminar's list and attend the sessions, email Dr. Araujo at aaraujo@howard.edu. You can check this page to see the annual program.
Fall 2024 - Spring 2025 schedule
October 10, 2024 (THURSDAY), 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM: Professor Vincent Brown (Harvard University) who will screen and speak about his documentary film How Do You Remember the Days of Slavery. For historical context, you can refer to his book Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (Harvard University Press, 2020). For more information on the documentary film check this link Location: HU Frederick Undergraduate Library, Multipurpose Room G007/008.
October 28, 2024 (MONDAY), 5:00 PM, Douglass Hall, room 221, "Slavery in Two Worlds: East Africans in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean," a talk by Dr. Kristina Richardson, John L. Nau III Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy and Professor of History and Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, at University of Virginia. This ia a joint activity with the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program.
October 30, 2024 (WEDNESDAY) 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM: Dr. Frederick Knight (Professor and Chair of the Department of History, Howard University) will give a talk on his new book Black Elders: The Meaning of Age in American Slavery and Freedom (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024). Location: Douglass Hall, room 311.
Fall 2023 - Spring 2024 schedule
September 13, 2023 (in person and on Zoom)
"Duse Mohamed and the African Times and Orient Review, 1912-1918"
Jeffrey Kerr-Ritchie, Professor, Department of History, Howard University
October 18, 2023 (in person and Zoom)
“Slave Mentality: A Case for the Emancipated Generation, William Washington Browne, and the True Reformers"
Anton House, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Political Science and Philosophy, Delaware State University
November 8, 2023 (on Zoom)
"Saliu Salvador Ramos das Neves, a Muslim Yoruba Religious Leader: Slavery, Freedom, Family and Transatlantic Networks Between Bahia and Lagos, c. 1830-1900"
Lisa Earl Castillo, Independent Scholar, Salvador, BA, Brazil
Kristin Mann, Professor Emerita, Emory University, Atlanta
January 17, 2024(in person and on Zoom)
"Black and Mulatto Oral Discourse and the Upending of the Western Design"
Monica Styles, Assistant Professor, Department of World Languages, Howard University
February 21, 2024 (on Zoom)
(Re)Imagining Topsy: Finding Significance in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Social Justice Cypher
Elizabeth C. Hamilton, Department of Visual and Performing Arts, Fort Valley State University
March 27, 2024 (in person and on Zoom)
Lifting this Burden” Unmarried Women, Reform and the Construction of Black Womanhood
Arlisha Norwood, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland Eastern Shore
April 24, 2024 (on Zoom)
“Being Acknowledged”: Diasporic Trajectories Told in the First-Person and the Construction of Archives of Slavery and Emancipation in Argentina
Magdalena Candioti, Associate Professor, Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Santa Fé, Argentina, and Associate Researcher of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET)
Fall 2022 - Spring 2023 schedule
September 7, 2022 (in person/ Zoom), 5:00 PM EST
From Womb to Work: Liberated African Motherhood and the Free Womb Law (Rio de Janeiro, 1850s and 1860s)
Ana Paula Nadalini Mendes (PhD student, University of Pennsylvania)
October 5, 2022 (in person/Zoom), 5:00 PM EST
“Slavery” and “Freedom": Two chapters from Pap: The Life and Lessons of Benjamin Singleton
Brandon R. Byrd (Associate Professor, Vanderbilt University)
January 18, 2022 (Zoom), 5:00 PM EST
Race and Memory in US Museums: A Shifting Memorial Landscape
Amy Sodaro (Associate Professor, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY)
February 22, 2023 (Zoom), 5:00 PM EST
Njinga Mbandi in the Afro-Brazilian Culture: Songs, Body movements and Ritual Performances in the Diaspora
Mariana Bracks Fonseca (Assistant Professor, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Brazil)
Fall 2021 schedule
September 15, 2021 (Zoom)
Drivers as Big Men: An African Model of Leadership on British Caribbean Plantations
Randy M. Browne (Associate Professor, Xavier University)
November 3, 2021 (Zoom)
When the Southern Department Established a Constitution’: André Rigaud’s Political Alternative to Haitian Independence,1810 -1811
Nathalie Frédéric Pierre (Assistant Professor, Howard University)
There won't be seminar sessions in Spring 2022.
Fall 2020 - Spring 2021 schedule
September 2, 2020
Free to Bury Their Dead: Religious Conversion and the Meanings of Freedom in the Eighteenth-Century Caribbean
Dr. Fernanda Bretones Lane, Assistant Professor, University of Florida
October 21, 2020
Women in Angolan History, 1500-1880s
Dr. Mariana P. Candido, Associate Professor, Emory University
November 4, 2020
Drapetomania: Memories of a Mania that Caused Enslaved Blacks to Run Away, 1851-1865.
Dr. Dann J. Broyld, Associate Professor, Central Connecticut State University
December 2, 2020
Remembering and Forgetting the Congos: Re-centering West Central Africans in Santiago de Cuba
Alexandra P. Gelbard, PhD candidate, Florida International University
West Central Africans in the Atlantic Slave Trade: The Case of Rhode Island and South Carolina
Arsène Francoeur Nganga, PhD candidate, Université Marien Ngouabi (Republic of the Congo)
January 13, 2021
Past, Present, and Future Challenges of Abolitionist Autobiographies: Revis(it)ing Modern Child Slavery in a Transnational Context
Dr. Laura Barrio-Vilar, Associate Professor, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
The Silence of the Letters: Slavery, Education and Freedom in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil, 19th century)
Dr. Alexandra Lima da Silva, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
February 3, 2021
The Nexus of Black Memory: The Multilayered and Historical Traumas of Afro-Caribbean Diasporic Subjects
Dr. Nicolas Ramos Flores, Assistant Professor, Colby College
Playing a Slave: Race and Performance in the Transatlantic Imaginary
Dr. Alisha Gaines, Associate Professor, Florida State University
February 24, 2021
Anticolonialism, Antiracism, Memory of Slavery and Reparations in Contemporary France
Dr. Audrey Celestine, Associate Professor, University of Lille, France
March 31, 2021
Mbali Carved Tombstones and the Memorialization of the Post-Abolitionist Racial Regime of Moçâmedes, Angola
Dr. João Figueiredo, Postdoctoral Researcher, Nova University Lisbon, Portugal
April 28, 2021
Named into Being: ‘African’ Surnamed Families in the Americas
Dr. Yvonne Captain, Associate Professor, George Washington University
The Misremembered “Uncle” Wallace & “Aunt” Minerva: Establishing Father-Daughter Kinship
Shelby Ward, attorney, Choctaw Freedman, and genealogist
Fall 2019 - Spring 2020 schedule
September 25, 2019
"Weaving Collective Memory"
Ana Lucia Araujo (Professor, Department of History, Howard University),
October 30, 2019
"'Principally Children': African American Children in the Domestic Slave Trade and the Abolitionist Imagination"
Dr. Richard Bell (Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland)
November 13, 2019
"Members of Two Families Simultaneously: Black Women, Slavery and Relationships in Eighteenth Century Massachusetts"
Dr. Felicia Thomas (Assistant Professor, Department of History, Morgan State University),
January 22, 2020
“The Languages of Atlantic History: A Perspective from Central Africa”
Dr. Kathryn de Luna (Associate Professor, Department of History, Georgetown University)
February 26, 2020
“’Bane of the Civilized World’: New England’s Slave Society, 1850-1870”
Dr. Kate McMahon, Museum Specialist, National Museum of African American History and Culture
March 25, 2020
Maintaining Connections: Preserving Slavery in Rhode Island During the Rise of Abolition
Dr. Emily Kluger (Assistant Professor, Department of English, Howard University)
April 29, 2020
"Baptized into Slavery: the Slave Trade and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Santo Domingo"
Maria Cecilia Ulrickson, Assistant Professor, Catholic University of America
Fall 2018 - Spring 2019 schedule
September 19, 2018
"Haiti’s Paper War: Post-Independence Writing, Civil War, and the Making of the Republic, 1804–1954”
Chelsea Stieber, Assistant Professor, Department of Modern Languages
October 24, 2018
"The Task System and Property Ownership during Slavery"
Felicia Jamison, President's Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park
January 23, 2019
"'Restless and Ambitious Men': Free Blacks and the African Colonization Movement in the Post-Revolutionary Chesapeake, 1789-1822"
Herbert Brewer, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Morgan State University
February 20, 2019
"Members of Two Families Simultaneously: Black Women, Slavery and Relationships in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts"
Felicia Thomas, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Morgan State University
Fall 2017 - Spring 2018 schedule
September 20, 2017
“The Beaten Way”
Richard Bell (Associate Professor, University of Maryland)
November 8, 2017
“Negros Monteros, Morenas Domesticas, and Enfants Cultivateurs: Unfree Labor and Constructed Race in Late-Colonial Santo Domingo"
Maria Cecilia Ulrickson (PhD Candidate, University of Notre Dame)
January 24, 2018
“American Yankees and Abolitionism in Nineteenth-century East Africa”
Jane Hooper (Assistant Professor, George Mason University)
February 21, 2018
"West Indies Emancipation: An Anthology of Speeches, Songs, & Poems”
Jeffrey Kerr-Ritchie (Professor, Department of History, Howard University)
March 28, 2018
”’I Must Possess My Own Body': William Trail and the Founding of a Free Black Community in Indiana"
Edna G. Medford (Professor, Department of History, Howard University)
April 25, 2018
Enslaved Women’s Armed Resistance to Slavery
Nikki M. Taylor (Professor, Department of History, Howard University)
Fall 2016 - Spring 2017 schedule
September 14, 2016
“Sex and Slavery: Intimacy, Power, and Kinship at Saint-Louis and Gorée”
Jessica Marie Johnson (Assistant Professor, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University)
October 12, 2016
"Reparations in the Era of Unfinished Citizenship”
Ana Lucia Araujo (Professor, Howard University)
November 16, 2016
“The Three Lives of Mary Prince: (Re)Imagining Authorship in Nineteenth-Century Print Networks”
Emily Kluger (Assistant Professor, Department of English, Howard University)
January 25, 2017
“Not Altogether of the Ordinary Material and Timber”: The Life of F.Z.S. Peregrino, 1851-1919”
Alcione Amos (Curator of the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, Washington DC)
February 22, 2017
"Facing slavery's legacy at Georgetown"
Adam Rothman (Professor, Department of History, Georgetown University
March 29, 2017
“Trajectories of Slavery in Mali”
Elke Strockreiter (Assistant Professor, Department of History, American University)
April 19, 2017
Africanos into Africanos Livres: The Brazilian Registries of the Liberated Africans Project
Daryle Williams (Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland)
Fall 2015 - Spring 2016 schedule
September 16, 2015
“Emancipation Time: Achieving Freedom during the American Civil War”
Joseph Reidy (Professor of History and Associate Provost, Howard University)
October 14, 2015
“The Comparative Fallacy: New Slaves and Old Slaves”
Jeffrey Kerr-Ritchie (Associate Professor of History, Howard University)
November 18, 2015
"The Public Performance of African Christianity in Early Modern Iberia."
Erin Rowe (Assistant Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University)
January 19, 2016
Paper's title: TBA
Edna G. Medford (Professor of History, Howard University)
February 24, 2016
"Strategies in Enslaved Communities during Times of Crisis: A Comparative View of the Caribbean and North America in the Mid-Eighteenth Century"
Jason T. Sharples (Assistant Professor of History, Catholic University of America)
March 23, 2016
"Slavery, Liberation, Canonization: Monuments to Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad"
Renée Ater (Associate Professor of Art History, University of Maryland)
Fall 2014 - Spring 2015 schedule
September 10, 2014 - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
"A Kidnapping in New Orleans During the Civil War"
Adam Rothman (Associate Professor, Department of History, Georgetown University)
October 8, 2014 - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
"Safe Travels: Passports and the Illegal Slave Trade in Nineteenth-Century Cuba"
David Sartorius (Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park)
November 12, 2014 - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
"Cultural Syncretism and the Duplicity of Anti-Slavery on the Gold Coast (Ghana)"
Rebecca Shumway (Adjunct Professor, Department of History, Georgetown University)
February 4, 2015 - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
"Reparations for Slavery in Brazil"
Ana Lucia Araujo (Professor, Department of History, Howard University University)
March 11, 2015 - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
"Held for Safekeeping: Black Women Imprisoned in Maryland during the Age of the Civil War"
Dr. Sharita Thompson (Independent Scholar)
Fall 2013 - Spring 2014 schedule
September 25, 2013 - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
"(Mis)Taken Identities: Kisama and the Politics of Naming in the Palenque Limón, New Grenada, c. 1570-1634"
Jessica Krug (Assistant Professor, George Washington University)
October 16, 2013 - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
"Politics and Gender in the Berbice Slave Rebellion, 1763-1764"
Marjoleine Kars (Associate Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore County)
December 4, 2013 - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
"Silver for Slaves: Negotiating for Slaves in Early Modern Madagascar"
Jane Hooper (Assistant Professor, George Mason University)
February 5, 2014 - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
"Kinship, Abolition, Commerce, and Colonization of 'Portuguese Guinea' c. 1830-1879"
Lumumba Shabaka (Assistant Professor, Howard University)
March 26, 2014 - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
"The Blackest Market: Kidnapping and the Domestic Slave Trade"
Richard Bell (Associate Professor, University of Maryland, College Park)
Fall 2012 - Spring 2013 schedule
September 12 (Wednesday) - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
"Black Purgatory: Female Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)"
October 9 (Tuesday) - 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Joseph Miller (University of Virginia)
A Discussion on the book The Problem of Slavery As History: A Global Approach (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012) by Joseph C. Miller
October 24 (Wednesday) - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Renée Ater (University of Maryland, College Park)
"Remembering and Commemorating the United States Colored Troops: The African American Civil War Monument, Washington, DC"
December 5, 2012 (Wednesday) - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Daryle Williams (University of Maryland, College Park)
"Rethinking the Christie Affair: Free Africans and Slavery during the Anglo-Brazilian Question, 1861-1865"
January 23 (Wednesday) - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Maurice Jackson (Georgetown University)
"Washington, DC: From the Founding of a Slaveholding Capital to a Center of Abolitionism"
March 27 (Wednesday) - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Pier Larson (Johns Hopkins University)
Fragments of an Indian Ocean Life: Aristide Corroller Between Islands and Empires
April 24 (Wednesday) - - 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Jeffrey Kerr-Ritchie (Howard University)
"Fugitive Slaves and Freedom's Frontier"