Slave Narratives in British and French America, 1700-1848

Trevor Burnard Announcement
Location
United Kingdom
Subject Fields
American History / Studies, French History / Studies, Latin American and Caribbean History / Studies, Slavery

14–15 July 2017

Notre Dame London Global Gateway
1–4 Suffolk Street
Northwest side of Trafalgar Square


Conference organizers:
Sophie White
University of Notre Dame
Trevor Burnard
University of Melbourne

This conference seeks to propel our thinking about how we understand the quotidian existence of enslaved people in the two biggest slave systems in the Greater Caribbean during the height of plantation slavery. Specifically, this conference focuses on alternative types of slave narratives and interrogates how such narratives were produced, the slave societies in which slave narratives existed and the meanings that we can attach to such narratives. The overall aim is to get more information about the everyday lives—including the spiritual lives—of slaves in the major two plantation empires in the Greater Caribbean. This should allow us to begin to move beyond planter narratives and accounts of slave life that outline demographic, material and economic realities in order to understand more fully enslaved persons’ lived experience. For French colonies, this means paying especially close attention to religion, since Catholic instruction was a formal requirement of enslavement. The conference will be the first ever dedicated to rethinking slave narratives in comparative British and French colonial perspective and will bring together some the world’s most eminent scholars of slavery. As such, this interdisciplinary gathering promises to be innovative, path-breaking and of profound significance.

This event is co-sponsored by the University of Notre Dame and the University of Melbourne. Additional support was provided by the Global Collaboration Initiative, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts' Henkels Lecture Fund, the Nanovic Institute of European Studies, and the Departments of American Studies, Africana Studies, and History at the University of Notre Dame.

Conference registration for this event is free but required. 

Contact Email
tburnard@unimelb.edu.au