Susanna Ashton, Kaniqua Robinson, Gregg Hecimovich & Rhondda R. Thomas as Directors for the 2023 NEH Summer Institute on “Reconstructing the Black Archive”
RESEARCH:
*Watch for: A Plausible Man, the True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin - forthcoming from The New Press in 2024
*Watch for: my newly edited reissue of 28 Years a Slave, or My Life on Three Continents by Thomas Lewis Johnson, forthcoming from Clemson University Press 2025
*For more about my other research projects and publications, click here for links or scroll below for video of one of my talks.
**********************
My latest article is a study of how the history of stenography in the United States was entwined with Progressive and Anti-Slavery rhetoric and how that shaped the work of author Charles W. Chesnutt. See “Volumes: Charles W. Chesnutt and the Racial History of the Stenographic Imagination.” American Literary Realism 1 January 2024; 56 (2): 119–136.
Another recent publication can be found here with Southern Spaces: https: Ablaze: The 1849 White Supremacist Attack on the Pendleton Post Office
In 1849 a mob of white supremacists eager to seize anti-slavery mailings attacked the US Post Office in Pendleton, South Carolina. They burned leaflets and letters in a bonfire on the village green to make clear their stance against incendiary ideas. This essay explores the context of these events by considering an initial spate of mailings that happened in 1835. This examination includes: their author, William Brisbane; the Calhounist culture of Pendleton that fueled this demonstration; the sad fate of the young man, John Barrett, who was arrested for the distribution of such materials; and those held captive in the middle of it all, the enslaved African Americans of Pendleton.
Other recent activities include, along with three other scholars (Rhondda R. Thomas, Kaniqua Robinson, and Gregg Hecimovich), serving as a co-Director for an NEH Summer Institute “Reconstructing the Black Archive, South Carolina as Case Study 1739-1895” held in June and July of 2023.
Current Research Query: Slave Passes
I’m beginning a major project about the history and language of “Slave Passes.” These documents tend to be erratically catalogued by museums and libraries. If you come across any which are uncatalogued or in private collections, or which you think are of special interest or significance, please let me know. Over the next few years I plan to definitively catalogue all known versions of these surveillance documents to understand this horrifying legacy of American writing and American policing