This seminar focusses on the some of the legacies of slavery, and commences with presentations by two specialist historians in this field:

• Manisha Sinha, Draper Chair in American History, University of Connecticut (pictured left, below)
• Clare Corbould, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Monash University (pictured right, below)

There will be time following the presentations for discussion with the audience.

Professor Sinha's presentation is entitled:

The Abolitionist International: Anatomy of a Radical Social Movement

Abstract: Based on the new book The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition, this talk is a “movement history” that expands the chronology of Anglo-American abolition and situates it transnationally. It is a wide-ranging reconsideration of abolition as a radical social movement and challenges much of the received historical wisdom and the dominant scholarly picture of abolitionists as bourgeois reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. The talk uncovers the political significance of slave resistance in the growing radicalization of the abolition movement and rejects conventional historical divisions between slave resistance and antislavery activism. It explores the impact of the Haitian Revolution, the European Revolutions of the 1830s and 1848, British Chartism, Irish Repeal, and the international peace movement on the politics and ideology of abolition. More than a few abolitionists espoused the rights of labor, women, immigrants, Native Americans, and led the movement to abolish capital punishment. They developed incipient critiques of the criminalization of blackness, unfettered capitalism, and the rise of western imperialism. This lecture will illustrate how the international radicalism of the abolition movement shaped its discourse and practice. More broadly, it interrogates how radical social movements like abolition provide political and ideological space for the disfranchised and become engines of political change.

Dr Corbould's presentation is entitled:

Roots and the Australian Afterlife of Slavery

Abstract: Roots (1977) was the most popular miniseries ever broadcast in Australia. According to a newspaper poll in 2000, it remained Australians’ favourite television miniseries. In this talk, historian Clare Corbould examines the reasons why Australians responded so warmly to this important tale about Atlantic slavery and its aftermath in the United States. She also examines some of its lasting effects, in Australian television drama and comedy and on theatre stages. 

 The Making Public Histories series, now in its tenth year, is offered jointly by the Monash University History Program, the History Council of Victoria and the Old Treasury Building. 

The seminar is free of charge but seating is limited, so we ask you to RSVP. Please book your place using the RSVP form, below.