PAST EVENTS

April 24th, 2024 – Out of Breath: Slavery, Ventilation, and the Emergence of Epidemiology, a lecture by Dr. Jim Downs (Gilder Lehrman-NEH Professor of History and Civil War Era Studies). Dr. Jim Downs was joined by Dr. Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha, Dr. Kerri Greenidge and Dr. Kendra Field for a conversation on slavery, its legacies, and the medical humanities. Moderated by Kyera Singleton, this special event took place in Medford’s historic Royall House & Slave Quarters, the only standing slave quarters in the Northern United States.

April 10th, 2024 – The Deep Roots of Racial Inequalities in US Healthcare: A Research Conversation with Dr. Benjamin Chrisinger (Assistant Professor, Community Health). Dr. Chrisinger was joined by Dr. Kerri Greenidge and Dr. Kendra Field in a talk on data visualization and racial inequality in the US healthcare system.

April 2nd, 2024 – Dr. Kendra Field and Dr. Kerri Greenidge will be speaking with Kyera Singleton (Executive Director, Royall House & Slave Quarters) at the 2024 Tufts Community Symposium.

February 14th, 2024 – Chance Bonar (Center for the Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow) spoke about his research on ancient slavery and its legacies in the modern United States.

February 8th, 2024 – Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh, Stanford University Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, visited Tufts University and the Royall House & Slave Quarters to speak about her award-winning book, The Souls of Womenfolk: the Religious Cultures of Enslaved Women in the Lower South (2021).

November 13th, 2023 — Reclaiming Our Hands, a conversation with local artist, Stephen Hamilton. In the summer of 2023, Stephen collaborated with the Royall House & Slave Quarters to teach African Textile Arts to Black students throughout greater Boston. This event featured the students’ work, produced over the course of 7 weeks, and placed it in the context of broader themes at the intersection of public history, northern slavery, and Black cultural production.

November 8th, 2023 — Slavery, Colonialism & their Legacies at Tufts: Black and Native Histories. An introduction to the SCL project hosted by the Center for the Humanities at Tufts, the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, Tufts Archival Research Center, the Office of the Provost and the History Department. Professors Kerri Greenidge and Kendra Field led a historical bus tour exploring sites of Black and Native history across Medford and downtown Boston. A public symposium followed, featuring the work of: Dr. Kerri Greenidge, Dr. Kendra Field, Dr. Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha, Dr. Vanessa N. Robinson, Dr. Jonathan Stephens, and the SCL research team. Vice Provost Bernard Arulanandam gave opening remarks, and colleagues engaged in related projects at neighboring universities in Massachusetts reflected on the connections between their work and the aims of the SCL initiative.

April 12th, 2023 — Knickerbocker Renaissance: Slavery & Education. Coit-Phillips annual lecture by Dr. Craig Steven Wilder (Barton L. Welter Professor of History at MIT) analyzing the relationship of slavery and colonialism to the construction of higher education. Dr. Wilder detailed the history of Dutch colonialism and pervasive enslavement in the Flatbush neighborhood of present-day Brooklyn, NY, and explored the role these violent projects played in the founding of Erasmus Hall Academy. This history illustrated, Wilder argued, that “key sites in the development of American slavery were also, in fact, key sites in the history of American education.”