LA REPRESENTATION DE L’ESCLAVAGE COLONIAL DANS LES MUSEES ETATS-UNIENS :
QUELS MUSEES ? QUELLE POLITIQUE MUSEOGRAPHIQUE ? QUELS IMPACTS POUR LA SOCIETE AMERICAINE ?
FRIDAY 7 October 2022 ONE-DAY CONFERENCE
THE REPRESENTATION OF COLONIAL SLAVERY IN AMERICAN MUSEUMS : which museums? Which museographic policy? Which impacts for American society?
Organisers : Anne-Claire Faucquez (Université Paris 8), Renée Gosson (Université Bucknell), Androula Michael (Université Jules Verne de Picardie)
Musée Paul Éluard de la ville de Saint Denis
9h00 – Welcome note by Anne Yanover, directrice du Musée Paul Éluard de saint Denis
Presentation of the “Narrativizing Slavery” project by the organizers
9h15-10h45 – The representation of slavery in the ex-Confederate Slates
Lawrence AJE (Université de Montpellier): “Telling the Full Story of Slavery in Charleston, South Carolina ? The International African American Museum”
Mélaine HARNAY (Université Paris 3): “Assessing the ‘Plantation Turn’ in Louisiana’s River Road after Whitney Plantation”
Andrew HOUCK (Université de Nanterre): “Slavery’s Reckoning in Unionist East Tennessee: African-American Memory and Museums in Southern Appalachia”
10h45-11h BREAK
11h-12h30 – The representation of slavery on presidential plantations
Seynabou THIAM (Université Paris 8), « La représentation de l’esclavage sur la propriété de Mount Vernon en Virginie ».
Renée GOSSON, (Université Bucknell), “A New National Narrative at James Madison’s Montpelier: Archaeology, Museography and Descendant Communities.”
Androula MICHAEL (Université Jules Verne de Picardie), « Monticello : le paradoxe de la liberté et le conflit de mémoires ».
12h30-13h30 LUNCH
13h30-15h – The representation of slavery in the Northern “free” states
Iris DE RODE (Université Paris 8) : “La Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route et l’histoire des soldats Afro-Américains dans la Révolution Américaine”
Anne-Claire FAUCQUEZ (Université Paris 8): « La mémoire des ossements : le New York African Burial Ground Monument et Visitor Center »
Olivier MAHEO (TEMOS (CNRS-Université Le Mans, ANR RelRace), « Equianoh Stories au DuSable Museum, Chicago, renouveler le parcours du plus ancien musée africain-américain ».
15h-15h15 BREAK
15h15-16h45 (ZOOM session)
Ariel SEAY-HOWARD (University of Chicago): “The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration (Montgomery, Alabama)”
Joe MC GILL (Charleston, South Carolina): “Chasing the Footprints of Slavery”
Ana Lucia ARAUJO (Howard University), “National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington”
16h45-17h GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
PARTICIPANTS BIOGRAPHIES
Lawrence Aje is an Associate Professor of United States history at the University Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3 who specializes in African American history. His current research explores the interconnection between law, race and group identity formation, as well as the migration and circulation of free people of color in the United States and in the Atlantic World during the 19th century. His recent publications include Ending Slavery: The Antislavery Struggle in Perspective (2022) which he co-edited with Claudine Raynaud, Traces and Memories of Slavery in the Atlantic World (2019) which he co-edited withNicolas Gachon and The Many Faces of Slavery, New Perspectives on Slave Ownership and Experiences in the Americas which he co-edited with Catherine Armstrong (2019).
Ana Lucia Araujo est historienne et professeure titulaire à Howard University à Washington D. C. (États-Unis). Ses trois plus récents ouvrages sont : Museums and Atlantic Slavery (Routledge, 2021), Slavery in the Age of Memory : Engaging the Past (Bloomsbury, 2020) et Reparations for Slavery and the Atlantic Slave Trade. A Transnational and Comparative History (Bloomsbury, 2017). Ana Lucia Araujo travaille sur l’histoire et la mémoire de l’esclavage et de la traite atlantique des esclaves. Elle s’intéresse également à la culture visuelle et matérielle de l’esclavage. Elle est membre de plusieurs comités éditoriaux de revues académiques, dont l’American Historical Review (États-Unis) et Slavery and Abolition (Royaume-Uni). Son livre Humans in Shackles. An Atlantic History of Slavery est sous contrat (Chicago University Press). Un autre, en préparation, The Gift. How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism (Cambridge University Press), fait l’objet de recherches en cours qui ont hébergées par l’Institut d’études avancées de Princeton (New Jersey, États-Unis) à travers la Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation en 2022, et par le Getty Research Institute à Los Angeles (Californie, États-Unis) en 2023.
Iris de Rode Iris de Rode is a Dutch historian who specializes in the French participation in the American Revolution. She received her PhD degree in November 2019 for her dissertation entitled “François-Jean de Chastellux (1734-1788), un soldat-philosophe dans le monde atlantique à l’époque des Lumières” (trans: a soldier-philosopher in the Atlantic world at the time of the Enlightenment) at the University of Paris 8. For her dissertation, she has earned thirteen fellowships, including grants from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, Mount Vernon, Monticello, the French embassy in the Netherlands and the French government. She has presented her research at about 45 international conferences. Her dissertation was published in March 2022, by the Editions Honoré Champion.
Today, she is writing her new book, Military Enlightenment on the Ground, due to be published in 2024 by the University of Virginia Press. For this she received fellowships from Mount Vernon, Monticello and the American Philosophical Society.
She has been teaching American and Transatlantic history and international history at the French University SciencesPo since 2013. Currently, she is working on a documentary film and an audio-guide app that retraces the steps of the French on the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Trail. She is also part of the consortium America 2026, and is going to organize a series of lectures with the French Embassy in Washington DC for the commemorations of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.
Anne-Claire Faucquez is associate professor in American civilisation and history at University Paris 8. She has published “From New-New Netherland to New York: The Birth of a Slavery Society 1624-1712” in 2021. She works on New York’s colonial past and more specifically on the issues of class and race in colonial America by comparing dependent populations
of forced laborers (slaves, indentured servants, apprentices, soldiers). Her next project deals with history writing and the erasure of the history of slavery in 19th century history books and textbooks. She is also interested in the commemoration and representations of slavery in public space (museums, monuments, and contemporary art).
Renée Gosson holds the David Morton and Leanne Freas Trout Professorship of French at Bucknell University (Pennsylvania, USA), where she directs the Bucknell en France program. Her research investigates the memorialization and museography of the transatlantic slave trade, colonial slavery, and abolition in France and in the French Caribbean and the potential for art(ists) to decolonize traditional museal narratives of enslavement.
Mélaine Harnay After a M.A. in American Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris, France, he spent a year at Tufts University in Boston as a T.A. for the French department. He has been a doctoral fellow in American Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University since October 2018 under the supervision of Hélène Le Dantec-Lowry, Professor Emeritus. His doctoral dissertation is on the representation and memorialization of slavery on the River Road plantations, in Louisiana. He recently spent 6 months at Tulane University, in NewOrleans, as a visiting researcher for his PhD.
Andrew Houck is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of Paris-Nanterre and his thesis studies the shifts in partisan memory of the Civil War in East Tennessee, through to the late 20th century. His research interests include memory studies, veterans’ organizations, and tourism in 19th and 20th century America.
Renée Gosson holds the David Morton and Leanne Freas Trout Professorship of French at Bucknell University (Pennsylvania, USA), where she directs the Bucknell en France program. Her research investigates the memorialization and museography of the transatlantic slave trade, colonial slavery, and abolition in France and in the French Caribbean and the potential for art(ists) to decolonize traditional museal narratives of enslavement.
Mélaine Harnay After a M.A. in American Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris, France, Melaine Harnay spent a year at Tufts University in Boston as a T.A. for the French department. He has been a doctoral fellow in American Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University since October 2018 under the supervision of Hélène Le Dantec-Lowry, Professor Emeritus. His doctoral dissertation is on the representation and memorialization of slavery on the River Road plantations, in Louisiana. He recently spent 6 months at Tulane University, in New Orleans, as a visiting researcher for his PhD.
Andrew Houck is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of Paris-Nanterre and his thesis studies the shifts in partisan memory of the Civil War in East Tennessee, through to the late 20th century. His research interests include memory studies, veterans’ organizations, and tourism in 19th and 20th century America.
Olivier Maheo is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the TEMOS, Temps, Mondes, Sociétés research team – CNRS-UMR 9016, and an associate member of the CREW (Sorbonne Nouvelle). He defended his PhD in 2018 in American history, about the tensions within the Black Freedom Movement. He conducts research on the uses of the past and counter-narratives of race from the African-American case. He organized the international conference, “Telling and exhibiting minorities in France and North America: minorities and their museum mediations” in partnership with the Musée du Quai Branly, in April 2022. He is currently conducting research as part of the ANR-supported project RELRACE, Religion, Lignages, Race, within the TEMOS laboratory, UMR 9016, CNRS-Le Mans.
Joseph McGill, Jr., is the founder of the Slave Dwelling Project and a history consultant for Magnolia Plantation in Charleston, SC. By arranging for people to sleep in extant slave dwellings, the Slave Dwelling Project has brought much needed attention to these often-neglected structures that are vitally important to the American built environment.
As of the beginning of 2018, Mr. McGill has conducted over 250 overnights in approximately 100 different sites in 19 states and the District of Columbia. He has interacted with the descendants of both the enslaved communities and of the enslavers associated with historic plantations. He speaks with school children and college students, with historical societies, community groups, and members of the general public.
Since 2016, Mr. McGill expanded the Slave Dwelling Project to offer a program of living history called “Inalienable Rights: Living History Through the Eyes of the Enslaved.” The Project has held an annual conference every year since 2013.
Mr. McGill is also the founder of Company “I” 54 th Massachusetts Reenactment Regiment in Charleston, South Carolina. The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was the regiment portrayed in the award-winning movie “Glory.” As a Civil War Reenactor, Mr. McGill participates in parades, living history presentations, lectures, and battle reenactments.
Prior to his current position, Mr. McGill was a field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, working to revitalize the Sweet Auburn commercial district in Atlanta, GA and to develop a management plan for the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area.
Mr. McGill served as the Executive Director of the African American Museum located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His responsibilities included seeking funds from grant making entities to support the capital and operating budget of the museum/cultural center and developing programs that interpret the history of African Americans.
Mr. McGill is the former Director of History and Culture at Penn Center, St. Helena Island, South Carolina. Penn School was the first school built during the Civil War for the education of recently freed slaves. As Director, he was responsible for the overall development and implementation of the Center’s program for collecting, preserving, and making public the history of Penn Center and the Sea Island African American history and culture.
Mr. McGill was also employed by the National Park Service, serving as a Park Ranger at Fort Sumter National Monument in Charleston, South Carolina. As a Park Ranger, Mr. McGill gave oral presentations on Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie on and off site. He supervised volunteers and participated in living history presentations.
Mr. McGill appears in the book Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. He is also a member of the South Carolina Humanities Council Speakers Bureau.
Mr. McGill is a native of Kingstree, South Carolina. Upon graduating from high school, he enlisted in the United States Air Force. While in the Air Force, Mr. McGill served as Security Policeman in England, Washington State and Germany.
Mr. McGill holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Professional English from South Carolina State University, Orangeburg, South Carolina.
He is married to the former Vilarin Mozee, and they have one daughter, Jocelyn Mozee McGill.
Androula Michael est historienne de l’art contemporain, maîtresse de conférences HDR, directrice du centre de recherches en art et esthétique (CRAE, UR 4291), responsable des relations internationales à l’UFR des arts de l’Université de Picardie Jules Verne, et commissaire d’expositions indépendante.
Ariel Elizabeth Seay-Howard is a Doctoral Candidate in the communication department at Wayne State University located in Detroit, Michigan, in the United States of America. Ariel is a rhetorician; her research focuses on materiality, racial violence, and public memory. Her current research investigates the nation’s remembrance of racial violence and how it has impacted African Americans’ lived experiences in the United States. She examines how new modes of commemoration, like lynching memorials, former slave plantations that are now museums, and documentary films, operate as counter-memories that help the public remember racial violence differently than the sanitized white narrative that American citizens are typically taught through K-12 schooling. Ariel has also recently completed a book chapter that examines the important role Black abolitionists, like Ida B. Wells, played in protecting the Black community from racial violence. Using their voices as tools to deconstruct white violence, Black abolitionists and freedom fighters fought for better representation for the Black community and illuminated the racial flaws in American democratic society. This chapter examines the racial violence that the African American community has endured throughout history and continues to bear. The chapter is a part of an interdisciplinary collection titled, Democracy in America. After Ariel completes her program, she plans to work as a professor and continue her research and activism to fight against racial violence.
Seynabou Thiam-Pereira is a doctoral candidate at Université Paris VIII (Saint-Denis/Vincennes) under the direction of Professor Bertrand Van Ruymbeke. Her research focuses on the Black Loyalists’ community and exile in the Maritime Provinces in Canada. She examines different aspects of their migration and uses social, religious, and political history in order to complete a comparative study of the three provinces from 1776 to 1815.