This one and half-day symposium examined the archival and popular representation of chattel slavery, as altered by the cultural and technological transformations of the 21st century. Scholars explored the histories and legacies of slavery in the Atlantic world, as they occur in art, film, literature, legal records, museums, social interaction, and technology. Our goal was to think across methodological approaches to slavery in order to clarify the exigencies and demands for continued investigation of the bondsperson’s experiences and the cultural significance of slavery.
This was the first panel that featured three participants and their papers:

1.)-“La Traversée: Free/Black/Female Crossings in a World of Atlantic Slavery,” by Jessica Marie Johnson, Assistant Professor, John Hopkins University

2.)-“Black Freedom and the Paradoxes of White Supremacy in Pre- Emancipation Brazil,” by Lamonte Aidoo, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor, Duke University

3.)-“Class Awareness in Antebellum Slave Narratives,” by William Andrews, E. Maynard Adams Professor of English, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

“Rethinking Slavery in the 21st Century: Images and Archives” was co-sponsored by the Duke University’s Department of African and African American Studies (AAAS), the Art, Art History & Visual Studies department, the Forum for Scholars and Publics, and the Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI).