Transatlantic Slavery Symposium

Dr. Miranda Kaufmann (award-winning author of Black Tudors: The Untold Stories and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, part of the School of Advanced Study, University of London) led a panel discussion on how uprisings alongside activism led to changes in the law which ultimately resulted in the abolition of slavery on both sides of the Atlantic. Joining her to discuss this topic were Dr. John Cairns (Professor of Civil Law at the University of Edinburgh), Dr. Vincent Brown (Charles Warren Professor of American History at Harvard University), and Dr. Manisha Sinha (James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut).

Dr. Kevin Butterfield, executive director of The Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington, moderated a discussion about constitutions and slavery in a transatlantic setting. Featuring Dr. David Waldstreicher, Distinguished Professor of History, City University of New York; Dr. Robert J. Cottrol, Harold Paul Green Research Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School; and Dr. Padraic X. Scanlan, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto, the panel explored the relationship between constitutions – written and unwritten, national and provincial – and slavery in the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world.

Dr. Stephen Mullen (University of Glasgow), Dr. Stephanie Jones-Rogers (University of California -- Berkeley), Dr. Ronald Bailey (University of Illinois), and Dr. Andrew O'Shaughnessy (Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, moderator) discussed the connections between slavery and global economic development. 

Dr Márcia Balisciano (Founding Director of Benjamin Franklin House), Brandon Dillard (Manager of Historic Interpretation at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello), and Brenda Parker (Coordinator of African American Interpretation at George Washington’s Mount Vernon), discussed how these three institutions contextualize and interpret Slavery in the Founding Era.

Wednesday, August 11, 2021, 2:00 p.m. ET/7:00 p.m. BST

Dr. Laura Sandy, Senior Lecturer in the History of Slavery and co-director at the Centre for the Study of International Slavery at the University of Liverpool led a discussion about interpreting slavery at historic sites on both sides of the Atlantic. Featuring Dr. Christo Kefalas, World Cultures Curator, National Trust (UK); Dr. Antoinette T. Jackson, Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida; and Jean-Francis Manicom, Curator at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, the panel considered the challenge of presenting slavery at public history sites.

Historian Annette Gordon-Reed (author of On Juneteenth and the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hemingses of Monticello) led a panel discussion about the importance of oral histories in understanding how individuals and communities experienced the forces of history. Andrew Davenport, Public Historian & Manager of the Getting Word African American Oral History Project, discussed Getting Word's near 28-year history and how descendants are “getting word” to us today about their lives, their families, and their dreams. Justin Reid is the director of Community Initiatives at Virginia Humanities and co-founder of The Lemon Project, which is aimed to address the history of slavery at the College of William & Mary. Alan Rice is Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Central Lancashire and co-director of the Institute for Black Atlantic Research (IBAR) and director of the UCLan Lancashire Research Centre in Migration, Diaspora and Exile (MIDEX). Together they discussed the importance of learning from the past to grapple with issues that face us today.