[URBANTH-L] ANN: Closing of the Slave Trades: Transatlantic Perspectives, An International Symposium (UK)

[Angela Jancius]

Closing of the Slave Trades: Transatlantic Perspectives, An International 
Symposium

QUEENS UNIVERSITY BELFAST
Thursday, May 29-Saturday, May 31, 2008

Co-sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, 
Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University and the School of History and 
Anthropology at Queen's University

The abolition of the international slave trades in the United Kingdom (1807) 
and the United States (1808) was perhaps only a small step for these 
nation-states, but created significant consequences for national identities 
and cultural developments within each sovereignty and spheres of influence. 
Millions of captured Africans were transported as unfree labor for European 
colonies. Emerging democracies in the New World, including Haiti, which 
pioneered emancipation for slaves, launched a new era for victims of the 
African diaspora.

Scores of commemorative events and programs have highlighted the anniversary 
of these watershed events in recent months. In May 2008 we will gather in 
Belfast to contemplate both trans-Atlantic perspectives on this renewed 
examination of the beginning of the end of the slave trade's dominance of 
the Atlantic World.  Museum curators, public historians, and scholars from a 
variety of disciplines and institutions will come together with a goal of 
creating an ongoing network of resources to highlight the ways and means of 
keeping antislavery commemorations in the forefront. In addition to a single 
day's series of panels, the symposium includes a roundtable (to be held one 
day in advance of the main program) highlighting new and emerging 
scholarship by graduate students: from the U.K., from the U.S. and from 
Africa.

Catherine Clinton
Queens University Belfast
Belfast, Northern Ireland
+44-2890375124
Email: catherineclinton at mac.com
Visit the website at http://www.yale.edu/glc/queens/index.htm