Global Dialogues: Shadows of Slavery

While the global history of enslavement is by now well-established, there is still much opportunity and need to advance comparative approaches. In the United States, the Atlantic Ocean world so predominates historical and heritage discourse that other histories, such as the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds, are denied their comparative potential. Definitions pose their own difficulties: questions of whether, and under what terminology, to include modern experiences of sexual and labor coercion have both scholarly and political ramifications.

The aim of this Global Dialogues event is to consider the longue durée of enslavement, as seen from today, concentrating on post-abolition. What happens after the end of formal slavery? To what degree do social conditions remain the same under new legal dispensations? How might we make sense of post-abolition heritage, given that in some communities the memory of enslavement is celebrated and in others taboo? How might the heritage of enslavement be conveyed to various publics?

Register for Global Dialogues: Shadows of Slavery

Speakers:

Kate McMahon
Historian of Global Slavery, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture

Kate McMahon is a museum specialist at the National Museum of African American History & Culture and leads research efforts at the Center for the Study of Global Slavery. She received her B.A. in art history and M.A. in American and New England studies from the University of Southern Maine. She completed her Ph.D. in history at Howard University in 2017. Her dissertation was entitled The Transnational Dimensions of Africans and African Americans in Northern New England, 1776-1865. Her current research explores New England’s connections to and complicity in the illegal slave trade and colonialism, 1809-1900. She is committed to exploring the living legacies of slavery and the slave trade in the present day and interpreting this history for a broad public through frequent public speaking engagements and scholarly production.

Laura J. Mitchell
Associate Professor of History, UC Irvine

Laura J. Mitchell teaches African and world history at UC Irvine, where she seeks to make sense of early modern societies using the tools of our digital age, and to make history accessible to diverse audiences, from K-12 students to museum-goers and devotees of the History Channel. Her published work explores the colonial history of South Africa and the contours of world history as both a teaching subject and research enterprise. Her first book was a born-digital project supported by the NEH, the ACLS, and the AHA’s Gutenberg-e prize. Belongings walks readers through rugged landscapes and complicated family relationships as it explains deep connections between natural resource use and cultural formation in colonial South Africa. Her current research investigates an 1825 slave rebellion that took place in a remote frontier region of the Cape Colony. This project explores the overlapping webs of family connections among settlers, enslaved laborers, and Khoisan indentured workers. She is a co-author of Panorama: A World History; starting in January 2025 she will edit the Journal of World History.

Vijaya Teelock
Historian of Mauritius

Vijaya Teelock is a Mauritian historian and writer. Teelock studied history and lectured at the University of Mauritius. She was the vice-chairperson of the Truth and Justice Commission and also held the position of president of the Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund. Vijaya Teelock has published a number of books, including Transition from slavery in Zanzibar and Mauritius: a comparative history with Abdul Sheriff, Bitter sugar: Sugar and slavery in 19th century Mauritius, and A select guide to sources on slavery in Mauritius; and, Slaves speak out: the testimony of slaves in the era of sugar.

Moderator:

Robin Chapdelaine
Associate Director, Stanford Center for African Studies

Dr. Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine is the associate director of the Stanford Center for African Studies. She came to Stanford from Duquesne University where she was an associate professor of history and director of undergraduate studies. She has also held administrative roles at Princeton University and Rutgers University. Her research focuses on human trafficking, child slavery, equity in higher education, and Black Joy practices. She is co-editor of When Will the Joy Come? Black Women in the Ivory Tower (2023); author of The Persistence of Slavery: An Economic History of Child Trafficking in Nigeria (2021); and won the 2021 Association for the Study of Worldwide African Diaspora prize for her article in "Marriage Certificates and Walker Cards: Nigerian Migrant Labor, Wives and Prostitutes in Colonial Fernando Pó," in African Economic History. She has published articles in Journal of West African History, Radical Teacher, and Bulletin of Ecumenical Theology and is currently guest editor for the theme “Retrospectives on Child Slavery in Africa” in Genealogy. She earned a Ph.D. in women's & gender history and African history at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ) and a B.A. at Santa Clara University.