The Breaking the Silence research initiative is co-sponsored by the Richards Center and an NEH We the People Challenge Grant and brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars interested in slavery, abolition, race, and unfree labor in the contemporary world. Colleagues gather from across not only the Department of History and the College of the Liberal Arts but from other colleges within the University. Participants have included historians, philosophers, literary scholars, geographers, social scientists, demographers, and geneticists. In anticipation of the bicenntennial commemoration of the legal end of slavery in 1808, this year's focus is the international slave trade after 1808 and the abolition, enforcement, and illicit importation of Africans into the Americas.
Fall 2007 Breaking the Silence Lecture Series:
The International Slave Trade after 1808:
Abolition, Enforcement, and the Illicit Importation of Africans into the Americas
- David Eltis, Emory University, "The Transatlantic Slave Trade Based in North America: Perspectives from the New On-line Database" September 28, 2007, 4:00 p.m., 102 Weaver Building
- Sean Kelley, Hartwick College, "Blackbirders and Bozales: African-born Slaves on the Lower Brazos River of Texas in the 19th Century" October 19, 2007, 4:00 p.m., 102 Weaver Building
- Paul Finkelman, Albany Law School, "Suppressing the African Slave Trade: The Limits of Legislation, 1794-1865" November 16, 2007, 4:00 p.m., 102 Weaver Building
- Karen Fisher Younger, Penn State, "Liberia and the Last Slave Ships" November 30, 2007, 4:00 p.m., 102 Weaver Building
Recent Speakers and Workshops
Sean Kelley, William Blair, and Amy Greenberg
during Prof. Kelley's Breaking the Silence workshop.
- Dylan Penningroth, Northwestern University, "Slaves' Claims to Family and Property in the Southern Gold Coast and the U.S. South" October 6, 2006, 4:00 p.m., 302 Pond Lab
- Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin, "Africa and Slavery in Context" February 2, 4:00 p.m., 102 Weaver Building
- Patrick Manning, University of Pittsburgh, "Slavery's Expansion in the Age of Emancipation: West Africa and the U.S. in the Nineteenth Century" February 23, 4:00 p.m., 102 Weaver Building
- Sandra Greene, Cornell University, "Remembering Enslavement: Ghana Memories of the Slave Trade" March 23, 4:00 p.m., 102 Weaver Building