Keynote: Freedom on the Move

Event Overview

In this special online event, Ed Baptist will present the Cornell-based Freedom on the Move (FOTM) project, in conversation with moderator Eric Tagliacozzo. The output of FOTM is a database documenting the lives of fugitives from American slavery through newspaper ads placed by slave owners in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the next phase of the project, the team will collaborate not only with other scholars from multiple disciplines but also public historians, genealogists, and archivists. By incorporating crowdsourced data, the researchers hope the project will enhance the ability of scholars from multiple disciplines to study the migration trajectory and experience of individuals and populations from slavery to freedom and beyond.
This event is sponsored by Cornell’s Migrations initiative.

Freedom on the Move has been generously supported by:
The National Endowment for the Humanities, Cornell University History Department and the College of Arts and Sciences, National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the University of New Orleans Midlo Center for Public History, Project Shine (Houston TX), the Cornell Center for Social Sciences, the Mellon Foundation, University of Alabama, Cornell University Library, the Delmas Foundation, University of Kentucky, Ohio State University, and thousands of users of/contributors to the site in the United States and beyond.

RESOURCES / NEXT STEPS

“What happens to middle school kids when you teach them about slavery”
https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/02/teaching-slavery-schools-kids-emotional-freedom-on-the-move.html

Cornell Migrations

Mellon Just Futures

Data Driven: New Research Puts Spotlight on Migrants’ Rights

Outsiders: How the Invasion Concept Shapes Migration Perspectives

Freedom on the Move

“What happens to middle school kids when you teach them about slavery”

What You'll Learn

Ways in which scholars are using crowdsourcing methods to fill gaps in the historical record
How new work on the history of North American slavery journeys to freedom brings academic and public scholarship into the conversation
How the Freedom’s Loom database will mobilize new kinds of study around this period in North American history

Speakers

view details hide details

Edward E. Baptist

Professor of History

Cornell University

Principal Investigator, FOTM; Professor of History, College of Arts & Sciences, Cornell University

Edward E. Baptist focuses on the history of the 19th-century United States and in particular on the history of the enslavement of African Americans in the South. The expansion of slavery in the United States between the writing of the Constitution in 1787 and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 had enormous consequences for all Americans. Indeed, the expansion shaped many elements of our modern world, both inside and outside the borders of the United States. Professor Baptist is writing a book about that process: the experience of the slave trades and forced migrations that drove expansion; the systems of labor that emerged; and the economic, political, and cultural consequences for women, men, and children.

view details hide details

Eric Tagliacozzo – Moderator

John Stambaugh Professor of History and Co-Chair, Cornell Migrations Initiative

Cornell University

John Stambaugh Professor of History and Co-Chair of the Migrations initiative, Cornell University

Eric Tagliacozzo’s work has centered on the history of people, ideas, and material in motion in and around Southeast Asia, especially in the colonial age. His first book, “Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier” (Yale, 2005), examined many of these ideas by analyzing the history of smuggling in the region. Professor Tagliacozzo’s most recent book project is “The Longest Journey: Southeast Asians and the Pilgrimage to Mecca” (Oxford, 2013). Professor Tagliacozzo is now working on a book about the linked maritime histories of Asia, from Yemen east to Yokohama.

View Keynote by completing the form below.

Gain access to this free event

KN Event Topics

Address:	950 Danby Rd.
	Suite 150
	Ithaca, NY 14850