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) will lead a panel discussion on how the law and abolition affected the lives of enslaved people on both sides of the Atlantic. Joining her to discuss this topic are 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, will moderate 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 will explore the relationship between constitutions – written and unwritten, national and provincial – and slavery in the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world.
Join 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) as they discuss the connections between slavery and global economic development.
Join 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), as they discuss how these three institutions contextualize and interpret Slavery in the Founding Era.
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 will lead a discussion about interpreting slavery at historic sites on both sides of the Atlantic. Featuring Ramin Ganeshram, Executive Director, at the Westport Museum for History & Culture; 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 will consider the challenge of presenting slavery at public history sites.
Join Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed on Friday, August 12 at 12 p.m. ET as she leads a panel discussion about the importance of oral histories in understanding how individuals and communities experienced the forces of history. As part of the Transatlantic Slavery Symposium, Gordon-Reed will be joined in conversation with Andrew Davenport, Monticello’s Public Historian & Manager of the Getting Word African American Oral History Project; Justin Reid, Director of Community Initiatives at Virginia Humanities and co-founder of The Lemon Project; and Alan Rice is Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Central Lancashire. Together they will discuss the importance of learning from the past to grapple with issues that face us today.