"THE SLAVE HAS SPOKEN FOR HIMSELF": The Slave Narrative as Historiographical Lens

[Editor's Note 1: As one certainly has noticed, in the previous months there has been a regrettable slowdown in the content provided by the site. Time management in and of itself is worthy of its own post, but needless to say, the busyness of our final semesters of coursework have diverted attention from posting on the website. Hopefully it has been some consolation to everyone that our Twitter account has remained relatively up-to-date.]

[Editor's Note 2: In lieu of the exciting news that 12 Years a Slave, the film adaptation of Solomon Northrup's 1853 slave narrative, won the Oscar for the Best Picture of the Year, I'd like to offer a suggestion as to how these rich resources - a number of which can be found at UNC's Documenting the South database - maybe be used for historiographical purposes.] 

William L. Sheppard, "The First Cotton Gin," 19th cent.

Peter Wood once admitted to anxiety regarding his source base when he began his research on slavery in colonial South Carolina. Bracing himself for the possibility that what was necessary for his work may “scarcely” exist, Wood instead discovered that slave voices proved “more than ample” through myriad primary sources.[1] Often, studying slavery requires a large mount of reading in the lines, such as utilizing the records of the Royal African Company to illuminate the morbid nature of the Middle Passage for saltwater slaves and examining probate records to gauge the economic optimism owners viewed the reproductive capabilities of their female human property.[2] Most valuable to historians, though, are the narratives left by escaped or emancipated former slaves who detailed their experiences whilst in the throes of the peculiar institution. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a close reading of a slave narrative – in this case, the narrative of James Williams – can act as a historiographical lens to recent scholarship on American slavery.

Recap: “This Terrible War: Marking the 150th Anniversary of the American Civil War,” The Center for Civil War Research

As the calendar inched closer to the ides of October, I found the semester grind having its (usual) effects. I am in my last year of coursework, and while I love learning, the seminars I am currently enrolled in are more labor intensive than I imagined. The annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association (this year in St. Louis), usually marks the first major break during fall semester, but seems far off.

Being a graduate student often presents a lonely existence; weekly – if not daily – reminders about your current course load, or perhaps the looming spectre of the dissertation prove hard to ignore. Even if you maintain a schedule that allows for minor breaks within the week, the responsibilities of the semester eventually catch up. In short, sometimes you need more of a jolt than simply another cup of coffee. My solution: heading to a conference! Luckily, there was conference (relatively) close at Ole Miss. So I rounded up some other grad students, hopped in a car, and road tripped to Oxford.

CFP Roundup 9.4.2013

Below are a number of recent Calls for Papers:

LAGO Graduate Student Conference, "Border Encounters in the Americas"

• When? February 13-15, 2014.
• Where? New Orleans, LA.
• Deadline: Ocotber 25, 2013.

Latin America and the Caribbean are rich with cultural, linguistic, and geographic diversity which has historically made and continues to make the region an object of prolific scholarly study across disciplines. Produced within this diversity are the boundaries—both physical and abstract—between nations, languages, ethnic and racial identities, ecologies, and geographies. Figurative and literal borders are confronted each day as people move across regions, navigate between cultures, and communicate with others around the world; global capital crosses national borders, redefines local economies, and produces labor migrations; geographical landscapes shift as land becomes deforested or designated as protected. These various “border encounters” highlight the ways in which borders can both restrain and liberate the objects, people, or ideas that face them, a distinction that is often bound up with power and politics…With this broad theme in mind, LAGO invites graduate scholars across disciplines to submit abstracts exploring the notion of borders—their strictures, leniencies, and significance—in Latin America and the Caribbean for LAGO’s 2014 graduate student conference. LAGO encourages participants to interpret this theme as they see fit. We invite submissions in the English and other languages of Latin America and the Caribbean regions.