Public memory of slavery and reparations for slavery: Transnational and comparative approaches.

A lecture by Professor Ana Lucia Araujo — Professor of History, Howard University, Washington DC, USA.

All are welcome: attendance is free.

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception at Highfield House Cloister.

Abstract

This lecture explores examples from different former slave societies in the Americas, Europe, and Africa to interrogate the complex dialogues between the concepts of history and memory as well as the ideas of symbolic, financial, and material reparations. Although in the last two decades many initiatives emphasized symbolic reparations, especially through the creation of monuments, memorials, and commemoration associated with slavery, demands of financial and material reparations, which have a long and persisting history, remain alive in former slave societies. This lecture revisits this history in order to show that beyond a national approach the memorialization of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade in the public space along with the calls for reparations must be understood from a transnational and comparative perspective.

About the speaker

Ana Lucia Araujo is a full professor in the Department of History of Howard University in Washington DC. Her research explores the history, memory, and heritage of slavery. She authored or edited over ten books on these themes, including Public Memory of Slavery: Victims and Perpetrators in the South Atlantic (2010), Shadows of the Slave Past: Memory, Heritage and Slavery (2014), and Brazil Through French Eyes: A Nineteenth-Century Artist in the Tropics (2015). Since last November she is a member of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Slave Route Project. Her latest single authored book, Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History was published by Bloomsbury in 2017.

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