The Precariousness of Freedom: Fugitive Slave Escape as Experience, Process, and Representation (2018)
April 26-27, 2018
About the Conference
This workshop seeks to contribute to the study of slave resistance through a focus on the enslaved fugitive. The act of running away, literally stealing oneself from one's owner, was a ubiquitous practice across the Americas which resulted in a compelling archive of partial narratives or "portraits" of the enslaved - published as fugitive slave advertisements. Larger narratives too, often endorsed by white abolitionists, came to create a unique literary genre known as the fugitive slave narrative. However, the assembled scholars will push beyond the more entrenched histories of the most famous fugitives; those who have been remembered primarily due to permanent escape. Instead, we challenge the often-assumed definition of the "successful" fugitives, as those who eluded recapture. While for the fugitive, that was surely the goal, for the contemporary scholar who has inherited the fugitive slave archives, the many who escaped temporarily have also provided us with invaluable information about their lives, experiences, and the processes of their escapes. The workshop creates the space for scholars to think creatively about the nature of the representation of the fugitive, both externally (by the white slave owners, surrogates, or sympathizers), and the possibilities of self-representation(where they existed). While some scholars will be working directly with fugitive slave advertisements, other papers are rooted in other events, artworks, material culture, primary, and archival sources. We collectively seek new ways to re-humanize the enslaved and to reactivate their histories and experiences.
All workshop sessions will take place in Room 205, 2nd floor, Harvard Faculty Club, 20 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Thursday, April 26, 2018
9-9:15 a.m. Welcome
9:15-10:45 a.m. Session I
The Cost of Doing Business: Petit Marronage, Governance, and Security in Jamaica, 1746-1824
Trevor Burnard, University of Melbourne
10:45 a.m. Break
11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Session II
“She got out of a garret window by the help of a ladder”: Tactics, Experiences, and Alliances of the Enslaved Fugitive in Nova Scotia and Quebec
Charmaine A. Nelson, Harvard University and McGill University
12:30-1:30 p.m. Lunch
1:30-3 p.m. Session III
The Allure of the Advertisement: Slave Runaways in and around New York City
Shane White, University of Sydney
3-3:15 p.m. Break
3:15-4:45 p.m. Session IV
Between Slavery and Freedom: Curaçaoan Maroons in the Spanish Colonial Legal System
Linda M. Rupert, UNC Greensboro
Friday, April 27
9-11:00 a.m. Session V
Visual Rhetoric and the Representations of the Amistad Mutiny
Lisa Merrill, Hofstra University
11-11:15 a.m. Break
11:15 a.m.-12:45 p.m. Session VI
Joshua Johnson’s Portraits of Whiteness
Sarah Blackwood, Pace University
12:45-1:45 p.m. Lunch
1:45-3:15 p.m. Session VII
Broken Chains, Broken Promises: Fashioning the Black Body and Rethinking Freedom in Colonial Jamaica
Steeve Buckridge, Grand Valley State University