Slave Narratives in British And French America, 1700–1848

On July 14–15, an international group of scholars will gather at Notre Dame's London Global Gateway for a conference called Slave Narratives in British And French America, 1700–1848.

This symposium 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 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.  This interdisciplinary conference will be the first ever dedicated to rethinking slave narratives in comparative British and French colonial perspective and promises to be innovative, path-breaking and of profound significance.

For more information, visit history.nd.edu/slave-narratives.

Sponsored by:
University of Notre Dame
University of Melbourne 

With support from:
Department of Africana Studies
Department of American Studies
Department of History
Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, Henkels Lecture Fund
Nanovic Institute for European Studies
Notre Dame International, Global Collaboration Initiative