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The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Council of
Independent Colleges
Announce a Seminar for Historians
"Slavery: Scholarship and Public History"
June 26-28, 2006, Columbia University
Nomination Deadline: Friday, February 3, 2006
Directed by David W. Blight, Class of 1954 Professor of American
History, Yale University, and James O. Horton, Benjamin Banneker Professor
of American Studies and History, George Washington University
The Council of Independent Colleges and the Gilder Lehrman Institute
of American History are pleased to announce the fifth annual seminar for
CIC faculty members in history and related fields. This year’s seminar
will focus on “Slavery: Scholarship and Public History.” The
seminar will be directed by David W. Blight, Class of 1954 Professor of
American History, Yale University, and James O. Horton, Benjamin Banneker
Professor of American Studies and History, George Washington University.
For those accepted to participate in the seminar, all expenses of participation
except travel to and from New York City will be covered by the Gilder
Lehrman Institute.
During the intensive three-day seminar, participants will consider the
issue that America as an idea was a complex contradiction, even before
it was a nation. Its ideal of human freedom contradicted its reality of
human slavery, a fact widely recognized and commented upon at the end
of the 18th century. In political debates and as the foundation for the
regional antagonisms that finally erupted in open warfare by the mid-19th
century, this great American paradox proved irreconcilable. Even emancipation
did not blunt its impact. Over the last century and more, historians have
attempted to explain the history of American slavery and its role in the
formation of the nation’s political, economic, and social structure.
Their changing interpretations reflect the state of American historical
scholarship and the racial dynamics of the nation. This seminar will focus
on American slavery scholarship, and the difficulty of the public presentation
of this most important aspect of American history as it confronts the
American memory and sense of heritage.
David W. Blight, Class of 1954 Professor of American History at Yale
University, is the author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American
Memory, for which he won the 2001 Frederick Douglass Prize and the
2002 Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes. His other books include Beyond the
Battlefield: Race, Memory and the Civil War, Frederick Douglass' Civil
War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee, and the edited volumes, When This
Cruel War is Over: The Civil War Letters of Charles Harvey Brewster; Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass; and The Souls of Black Folk,
by W.E.B. DuBois.
James O. Horton, Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and
History at George Washington University, is also director of the African
American Communities Project at the National Museum of American History,
a member of the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, and president of the
Organization of American Historians. He is author of Free People of
Color: Inside the African American Community, and co-author of In
Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks,
1700-1860; Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the
Antebellum North; and Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African
America.
Gilder Lehrman History Seminar Brochure
and Nomination Form 
(This is a PDF file. In order to view properly, the minimum software requirement
is version 4.0. Adobe Acrobat is available for free from the Adobe
Web site.)
Click here
for information on previous Gilder Lehrman Seminars.
Click
here for other resources found at the Gilder Lehrman Institute's
website.
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