Penn and Slavery

Penn and Slavery:
A Symposium organized by the Penn & Slavery Project & the Program on Race, Science, and Society
 
This symposium, co-hosted by the Penn & Slavery Project and the Program on Race, Science & Society (housed in the Center for Africana Studies) with support from the Office of the Provost, the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, The Penn Medicine Office of Inclusion and Diversity, and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, will provide a space for presenting research and discussions regarding Penn’s relationship with the institution of slavery. The symposium will feature presentations by undergraduates currently conducting research as part of the P&SP, as well as roundtable and panel discussions by some of the nation’s leading scholars of slavery, race, and medicine. Especially in 2019, given the significance of the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to British North America, this symposium affirms Penn’s commitment to engaging with the history of slavery. The symposium, which will be open not only to the Penn community but to the Philadelphia community more broadly, responds to President Gutmann’s call to offer educational and cultural programming which illuminates Penn’s connections to slavery.
 
Wednesday, April 3
 
4:00-4:15 pm  Welcome: Dr. Wendell Pritchett, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania
 
4:15-5:45 pm  Introductions: William Noel, Director of the Kislak Center & the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies
 
Plenary roundtable:
Kathleen Brown, David Boies Professor of History; Director of the Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality and Women; Director of the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program, University of Pennsylvania; Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights; Professor of Africana Studies; Director of the Program on Race, Science & Society, University of Pennsylvania; Deirdre Cooper Owens, Associate Professor of History, Queens College, CUNY; Director for the Program in African American History, Library Company of Philadelphia
 
5:45-6:45 pm Reception
 
Thursday, April 4
 
9:30-10:00 am   Registration, Coffee provided
 
10:00-11:15 am  Session 1: Penn & Slavery Project Research Findings
 
Research presentation by current undergraduate seminar students
 
11:15-11:30 am  15-minute break, refreshments provided
 
11:30am-12:30 pm  Session 2: Working on the Penn & Slavery Project: Current Research Areas, Strategies, and Ideas for the Future
 
Moderator: Daniel Richter, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History

Speakers: Richard S. Dunn Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania; Arielle Julia Brown, Cultural Planning Consultant for the Penn & Slavery Project, Public Programs Developer, Penn Museum; Alexis Broderick Neumann, Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow for the Penn & Slavery Project and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries; Paul Mitchell, PhD Candidate in Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania; VanJessica Gladney, Public History Fellow for the Penn & Slavery Project; Breanna Moore, Independent Scholar
 
12:30-1:00 pm  Session 3: Reimagining Penn’s History through Augmented Reality
 
VanJessica Gladney; Laurie Allen, Director of Digital Scholarship, University of Pennsylvania Libraries; Paul Farber, Artistic Director of Monument Lab; Lecturer in Fine Arts/Urban Studies, University of Pennsylvania
 
1-2:30 pm  Lunch (provided)
 
2:30-4:30 pm  Session 4: Slavery and Medicine: What was Penn’s Role?
 
Moderator: Dorothy Roberts
 
Speakers: Daina Ramey Berry, Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin; Sowande’ Mustakeem, Associate Professor of History and of African and African-American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis; Rana Hogarth, Assistant Professor of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Christopher Willoughby, Lapidus Center Postdoctoral Fellow, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library
 
4:30-5:30 pm  Reception