Abolishing Slavery - ­Then and Now: A Common Ground Against Slavery for Scholars, Activists and Public Policy Advocates Beecher House Center for the Study of Equal Rights and the University of Connecticut

Dates: May 29 - June 8, 2008
Location: University of Connecticut, Storrs
Call for proposals deadline: October 16, 2007

The Conference will focus on the history of slavery and efforts to abolish in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as on the unfinished business of slavery, including the legacies of slavery and the ongoing scourge of slavery in the 21st century.

Accordingly, the Conference seeks to foster exchanges and collaboration among historians, scholars in related fields, public policy experts, and representatives of non-governmental agencies, and activists who are directly engaged on a day-to-day basis in combating the legacies of 19th century slavery and the persistence of slavery as it practiced today.

In the largest sense, this Conference aspires to link the study of the past with the activism of the present in order to better understand and more effectively combat both the legacies of 19th century slavery and the continuation of slavery in the world today.

With these goals in view, the Conference’s organizers invite proposals that address specific aspects of these broad areas:

- 18th and 19th British and American Abolitionist and Antislavery Movements: Comparisons, Contrasts, Consequences
- Emancipation Movements “Then” and “Now”: Comparisons, Contrasts and Analogies
- Documenting and Combating the Legacies of Transatlantic Slavery: Economics, Public Policy, NGOs and On-the-Ground Activism
- Documenting and Combating the New Slavery: Economics, Public Policy, NGOs and On-The-Ground-Activism

In seeking to explore these issues, we look for papers, panels and presentations that reflect a rich spectrum of views and research. Mutual understanding and coalition building, both intellectual and practical, are overriding conference goals. We thus invite proposals from historians and scholars from other disciplines who work in a broad variety of fields, as well as from a wide array of public policy experts, NGO officials, representatives of civic organizations engaged in a hands-on manner with slavery’s “unfinished business”, and survivors of slavery.

Proposals can take the form of individual papers or complete panels of several participants
 
Proposals can also take the form of informational displays, exhibits and conversation areas that will be open to participants and the general public throughout the Conference

Please remember that the Conference organizers put as high a premium on informational exhibits of all kinds as they do on formal papers and panel presentations

Submit to James Brewer Stewart, Chair of the Conference Organizing Committee.
Submission guidelines available from the Chair.

Please direct all questions or concerns to:

James Brewer Stewart
James Wallace Professor of History
Macalester College
St. Paul, MN 55105
651-696-6496
stewart@macalester.edu