Day One: Session Two - Re-interpreting Slavery: New Scholarly Approaches

The last 20 years have also seen profound changes in the interpretive methodologies that scholars utilize to study slavery and the lives of the enslaved. New approaches such as gender analysis and group biography have had a significant impact on the field, and generated new insights into the ideological foundations of racial slavery, cultural formation processes in African-American communities, and a host of other important topics. This session seeks to examine in what ways the scholarly literature on slavery has changed since the 1980s, what new types of questions historians are asking and answering, and where slavery studies might be headed in the future. Moderator: Joseph C. Miller, T. Cary Johnson, Jr. Professor of History, University of Virginia Panel: Annette Gordon-Reed, Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History, Harvard University; Lucia Stanton, Shannon Senior Historian Emeritus, Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello; Dianne Swann-Wright, Independent Scholar, former Director of African American and Special Programs, Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello