slavery – Department of History

Alumna Returns to Discuss Book That Began as Undergraduate Research Seminar Project

December 9, 2022

Dr. Isabela Morales (UA Class of 2012) returned to campus September 29-30 to talk about her first book, Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom (OUP, 2022). Speaking to a group of fifty undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty, Dr. Morales explained how her research began in Dr. Jenny Shaw’s American Slavery Research Seminar (now HY497) during the Fall 2011 semester. The subject of that seminar was “Slavery in the Americas” and following a visit to the W.S. […]

Alumna Returns to Discuss Book That Began as Undergraduate Research Seminar Project

October 10, 2022

Dr. Isabela Morales (UA Class of 2012) returned to campus on September 29th and 30th to talk about her first book, Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom (New York: OUP, 2022). Speaking to a group of fifty undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty, Dr. Morales explained how her research began in Dr. Jenny Shaw’s American Slavery Research Seminar (now HY497) during the Fall 2011 semester. The subject of that seminar was “Slavery in the Americas” and […]

Professor Matthew Karp Discusses Slaveholders and Foreign Policy

September 20, 2017

On September 20th, Dr. Matthew Karp of Princeton University delivered a lecture in ten Hoor Hall, entitled “Slave Power: How Southern Slaveholders Mastered U.S. Foreign Policy.” In addition to providing an overview of his book, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy, Karp discussed how slaveholders in the Antebellum South viewed themselves and their domestic and foreign policy interests. Karp highlighted the anachronisms that frequently color our understanding of the South and Southerners leading up […]

Professor Joshua Rothman Part of Team that Receives $300,000 NEH Grant

September 12, 2017

This story was published originally in The University of Alabama College of Arts & Sciences’ Desktop News. Can you imagine opening a newspaper and seeing an advertisement for a runaway slave? In today’s world, it’s hard to fathom what it must have been like to live in a time when slavery was accepted. Dr. Joshua Rothman, a professor of history and chair of the Department of History, is on a mission to make understanding that world—and the many things we […]

Cornell University Professor Edward Baptist Speaks to Department

March 7, 2017

On March 6, 2017, Professor Edward Baptist spoke to a packed house in ten Hoor Hall about his new project, a history of efforts to contain black movement in North America and of resistance to those efforts. His talk, entitled “Making White Freedom by Hunting Enslaved Africans,” described the evolution of laws and social practices in colonial America that made people of African descent subjects of suspicion and susceptible to policing by white colonists. Professor Baptist is a professor of history […]

Dr. Edward Baptist to Speak on “Creating White Freedom by Hunting Enslaved Africans”

February 28, 2017

Dr. Edward Baptist, professor of history at Cornell University and author of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, will be giving a talk on Monday, March 6, at 5pm in 30 ten Hoor Hall. The talk is entitled, “Creating White Freedom by Hunting Enslaved Africans.” This event is hosted by the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South and the Department of History. It is free and open to the […]

Professor Kathleen DuVal to Accept Deep South Book Prize and Speak on Independence Lost, February 15

February 6, 2017

On February 15, Kathleen DuVal, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, will be speaking about her book, Independence Lost: Lives at the Edge of the American Revolution, winner of the 2016 Deep South Book Prize from the Summersell Center for the Study of the South. Focusing on the American Revolution as it played out along the Gulf Coast, Independence Lost demonstrates the imperial dimensions of the conflict and the multitude of ways those who are rarely […]

Dr. Josh Rothman Appeared on NY Public Radio to Discuss New Insights in the History of American Slavery

July 28, 2016

Professor Josh Rothman, director of the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South, appeared recently on Albany, NY’s WAMC-FM to discuss how ads placed for the return of runaway slaves gives us a more complete picture of our history. Text of the entire interview is available here.