Yale Bulletin and Calendar

October 21, 2005|Volume 34, Number 8

Reparations for slavery to be
among topics of conference

The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition (GLC) will hold it's seventh annual international conference, titled "Repairing the Past: Confronting the Legacies of Slavery, Genocide and Caste," Thursday-Saturday, Oct. 2729 in Levinson Auditorium at the Law School, 127 Wall St.

The conference will explore the crossroads among historical knowledge, the obligation to remember and the necessity of seeking retrospective justice. It is co-hosted by the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice.

The conference will open at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday with welcoming remarks by David Blight, director of the GLC, and professor of African American studies. A keynote address titled "The Continuing Significance of Reparations: Callie House and the Ex-Slave Pension Movement" will be delivered by Mary Frances Berry, the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania.

The conference's six panels will cover a broad range of topics facing historians today, including "Slavery, Exploitation and the Philosophy of Reparations," "Law, Memory and the Politics of Reconciliation, Atonement and Apology," "American Slavery and the History of Reparations" and "Germany, Holocaust Memory and the Idea of Historical Justice." Panelists come from an extensive assortment of historical perspectives and include Yale faculty members Stephen Pitti, professor of history and author of "Bracero Justice: The Legacies of Mexican Contract Labor"; Ben Kiernen, the Whitney Griswold Professor of History and director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale; Stuart Schwartz, the George Burton Adams Professor of History; and Gerald Jaynes, professor and director of graduate studies in African American studies.

The conference will prompt a deeper examination of how 21st-century nations and cultures attempt to remember, reconcile and learn from traumatic events in their common histories. Additionally, panelists and conference attendees will address issues about the obligations of those who endeavor to reconcile the convergence of knowledge, memory and justice.

Those planning to attend can register by visiting the website www.yale.edu/glc/justice/index.htm. Registration will also be available at the door.

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