The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition -- part of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies -- will be dedicated with a series of events Sunday and Monday, Nov. 15 and 16.

The center, which will explore all aspects of the Atlantic slave trade, was founded with the financial and intellectual support of Yale alumni Richard Gilder '54 B.A.,
'57 Law, and Lewis E. Lehrman '60 B.A. Its first director will be David Brion Davis, Sterling Professor of History and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and scholar of slavery and abolition. The center will be headquartered at 80 Sachem St.

The center will foster understanding of the role of slavery, slave resistance and abolition in the New World by bringing together scholars to study these areas. It will also organize international and interdisciplinary conferences, host visiting scholars, engage in teacher training and curriculum development, and administer the annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize. In addition, it will sponsor publi-
cations, lectures and research fellowships.

The center will begin its dedication celebration at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 15, with a panel on Steven Spielberg's film "Amistad." At 5:30 p.m., the Spielberg film will be screened. Both events will be held at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St. The screening and panel, cosponsored by the Film Study Center at Yale, are free and open to all.

The celebration will continue with a reception at 4 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 16, and with the presentation of its inaugural lecture at 7:30 p.m. The featured speaker will be Howard Jones, chair of the history department at the University of Alabama and author of "Mutiny on the Amistad," who will discuss the myth that Cinque, the leader of the Amistad captives, became a slave trader upon his return to Africa. Both events will take place in Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Ave., and are free and open to the public.

The new center has scheduled its first conference for the fall of 1999. Participants will compare internal slave trade in the American South, Brazil and the West Indies, and will explore how abolitionists responded to and publicized these population movements.

For more information, contact Robert P. Forbes, executive coordinator, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, at 432-3339 or by email at gilder.lehrman.center@yale.edu.