What is the Black Archive? : Work-in-Progress Seminar

In collaboration with St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and the British Library, Columbia University professor and MacArthur Fellow, Professor Saidiya Hartman will be leading a work-in-progress seminar focused on her efforts to reframe and rewrite the African American archive.

Foregrounding questions of archival provenance, presence and absence in her research, Professor Saidiya Hartman is one of the leading voices in African American scholarship and wider Black Studies. In her groundbreaking books Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-making in Nineteenth Century America (1997), Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (2007), and Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019) she builds upon scattered archival traces to exhume the lives of rebellious women, queer pioneers, and African Americans at all levels of society. By creatively pushing the boundaries of what archives can reveal, Professor Hartman brings those forgotten back into memory.

A part of the unfolding series, ‘What Is the Black Archive?’ at the British Library, Professor Hartman’s events will reflect on her practice, in particular turning back to Scenes of Subjection on the eve of the release of its new edition, and look ahead to new possibilities in Black Studies.

What is the Black Archive: work-in-progress seminar

Thursday 17th October, 2024

12.00 – 14.00

3rd Floor Seminar Room, Radcliffe Humanities Building, Woodstock Rd, Oxford

Lunch will be provided between 12.00 – 12.30. If you have any allergies or food restrictions, please email the TORCH team: torch@humanities.ox.ac.uk

Please register here to attend and please note that this work-in-progress seminar will have pre-reading and require participation during the session.