Current and Past Events
2020
On February 13, 2020, in New York City, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at the MacMillan Center at Yale University will present a Special Achievement Award to our colleague Julius S. Scott’s
The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution (Verso Press, 2018). Scott is Lecturer of Afroamerican and African Studies, Emeritus, at the University of Michigan.
2019
Rebecca J. Scott, "Maternidades esclavizadas y revolución en el Caribe: Los expedientes judiciales de María Coleta," seminar at the University of Chile, 10 AM, December 13, 2019. Location: Sala de seminario de Cegecal, tercer piso de la Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades de la U de Chile, Av. Grecia 3401, Ñuñoa, Santiago.
2018
Caribbean Lecture Series, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
Rebecca J. Scott
"Luisa Coleta and the Capuchin Friar: Slavery, Salvation, and the Adjudication of Status (Havana, 2017)"
Friday, June 22, 2018 at 2:00 PM
Room AS1_23, 54 Boulevard Raspail, Paris 6e
Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America
This new book by Martha Jones tells "how African American activists radically transformed the terms of citizenship for all Americans."
A select listing of Professor Jones' upcoming talks and appearances:
July 8, 2018:
Politics & Prose, Washington, DC
July 19, 2018:
American Civil War Museum, Richmond, VA
September 11, 2018:
Howard University Bookstore, Washington, DC
For a complete listing, please visit
marthasjones.com/birthright-citizens.
2017
Launch of a special issue of the journal
Brésil/s focused on contemporary slavery, sponsored by the Centre De Recherche sur le Brésil Contemporain, Mondes Américains, EHESS, in Paris.
96, Boulevard Raspail, Paris 6e
Thursday, June 8, 2017
2:00-6:00 p.m.
More information, and a link to the content of the journal, at:
http://mondes-americains.ehess.fr/index.php?1984
2016
Social Facts, Legal Fictions, and the Attribution of Slave Status: The Puzzle of Prescription12:00 PM Wednesday, January 28, 2016
Rebecca J. Scott, Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History and Law
Location: HGS 211, Yale University, 320 York Street, New Haven, Connecticut
Nineteenth-century slaveholders sought the protections offered by the construct of “property in persons,” while evading several of the implications that property law might impose. Early civil law in Louisiana, for example, seemed to allow “freedom by prescription.” If a person had lived “as free” for a term of years, in effect possessing himself or herself, then he or she might challenge an effort at re-enslavement by the prior owner —on parallel with the rules for extinction of other forms of property ownership through the lapse of time. Aware of the possible implications in a city in which thousands of refugees from revolutionary Saint-Domingue were claimed as slaves, several of Louisiana’s most distinguished jurists sought to bury the doctrine. In this talk, Rebecca Scott explores the nexus of possession and status, tracing legal claims to liberty that rested on this shard of ancient doctrine.
2015
Clinnect Conference: A Global Dialogue to Share Best Practices Between Clinics Representing Victims of Human Trafficking and Slavery