UIC Hosts Symposium on Consequences of Slavery
“Slavery and its Aftermath in the Atlantic World: An International Symposium” will be held Oct. 4 – 6 in UIC Student Center East, 750 S. Halsted St.
Presented in part by the Institute for the Humanities at UIC and inspired by the UIC Library’s collection of works on abolition, the founding of Sierra Leone, the transatlantic slave trade, and modern Caribbean literature, the event will bring together leading scholars to discuss the latest research on slavery and abolition.
Scheduled panel topics include abolition; Freetown and empire; Black Atlantic in the age of revolution; Caribbean and Black Atlantic thought; the colonial legacy and future of Sierra Leone; and race, racism, memory and the legacy of slavery.
The opening keynote address will be delivered Oct. 4 at 4 p.m. by Lawrence Hill, author of “Someone Knows My Name,” which was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book in 2008. Hill’s talk is titled, “Faction: Merging History and Fiction in ‘Someone Knows My Name’/’The Book of Negroes.'”
A second keynote will be given Oct. 5 at 4 p.m. by Toyin Falola of the University of Texas at Austin. Falola, an acclaimed African studies scholar, writer, and editor of dozens of books, was named the 2011 distinguished Africanist by the African Studies Association.
Admission is free. The complete schedule and details are available online. For more information, call (312) 996-6352.
The UIC Library’s exhibit of related documents, “Commerce in Human Souls: The Legacy of the Atlantic Slave Trade,” formally opens Oct. 5 at 5:30 p.m.
The symposium is part of UIC’s 30th anniversary celebration, which marks the university’s founding through the consolidation of the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle and the University of Illinois Medical Center.
The Institute for the Humanities at UIC provides a forum for intellectual exchange among faculty and students at UIC and other colleges and universities in the region, as well as an avenue through which research in the humanities can become relevant and accessible to the urban public.
