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The Center for the Study of Slavery and its Legacies will be creating a periodic newsletter to share news and updates. Visit the sign up page to share your contact information.

Upcoming Activities

• The GCSSL Graduate Research Workshop features work-in-progress by Georgetown doctoral candidates investigating the history of slavery and its legacies. View the 2023-24 Schedule.
• Universities Studying Slavery Conference 2023, October 18-October 21, hosted by Dalhousie University and the University of King’s College, in partnership with the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. 

Recent Activities

• On September 19, 2023, the Center’s launch event featured a live musical performance of “Requiem for the Enslaved.”
• In September 2023, Center Director and Professor Adam Rothman participated in a webinar conversation on Slavery, Child-family Separation, and the Catholic Church in the United States; and a panel discussion about Out of the Vineyard, a play based on the historical book “A Question of Freedom: The Families who Challenged Slavery from the Nation’s Founding to Civil War” by William G. Thomas III.
• Labor Day weekend 2023, members of the Descendant community participated in gatherings throughout Southern Maryland as part of an initiative hosted by The Reclamation Project. The Reclamation Project’s Southern Maryland Descendant Gathering initiative was one of the first grant recipients as part of Georgetown’s Reconciliation Fund. 
• In August 2023, Center Director and Professor Adam Rothman joined a panel during New Student Orientation to share Georgetown’s history with incoming undergraduate students.
• In April 2023, in honor of D.C. Emancipation Day 2023, the Center hosted an interactive event for participants to transcribe archival runaway slave advertisements from the Georgetown neighborhood, collected from 18th and 19th-century newspapers. This process of archival transcription is foundational for research to better understand the lives of enslaved people and the world they lived in.

What We’re Reading

• Collins, David J. The Jesuits in the United States: A Concise History. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2023.
• Endres, David J., et al. Slavery and the Catholic Church in the United States: Historical Studies. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023.
• Swarns, Rachel L. The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church. New York: Random House, 2023.
• Wingert, Cooper. “Fugitive Slave Renditions and the Proslavery Crisis of Confidence in Federalism, 1850–1860”. The Journal of American History 110:1 (2023): 40–57.

Visit our resources page to find a list of relevant books, articles, and videos.

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