Seminar series discussing slavery

Nipissing University welcomes Dr. Margot Maddison-MacFadyen to campus for a special lecture, titled Critical Histories and Geographies of Colonial Enslavement: Mary Prince and Her Enslavement Story, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself, on Friday March 24 at 2:30 p.m. in room A252. Dr. Maddison-MacFadyen is a Canada Research Chair Postdoctoral Fellow at Nipissing University.

All are welcome and admission is free.

Here is an abstract:

Mary Prince (1787/1788 – after 1833), the first known black West Indian woman to relate a slave narrative, was sold four times. Bermuda-born, Prince was transported to two West Indian territories—Grand Turk Island and Antigua—plus to London, England. She was the storyteller of an abolitionist storytelling, compiling, and editing team that brought her survivor story to print, in 1831. In 2012, Prince was made a Bermudian National Hero. Using Prince’s slave narrative as a guide and resource, and applying mixed research methods that included oral traditions kept by knowledge holders in the territories of her enslavement, I critically investigated Prince’s narrative and situated her in the story of colonial enslavement, Abolition, and resistance.

Current photographs, maps, archival images of historical structures associated with Prince and of archival documents, such as Slave Registers of former British Colonial Dependencies, embellish this presentation which takes an historical and geographical approach and follows the journey of Mary Prince through the territories in which she was enslaved.

This lecture is part of the History department’s seminar series, and is co-presented by the MES/MESc Seminar Series.