2004 Schedule

The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition presents its sixth international conference: From Chattel Bondage to State Servitude: Slavery in the 20th Century

October 22-23, 2004
Luce Hall, Yale University


 

SCHEDULE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22

8:00-9:00 Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00-9:30 Welcome and Introductions, David W. Blight, Yale University

9:30-12:00 Keynote Address

Suzanne Miers, Professor Emerita, Ohio University
” Freedom is a Good Thing but it Means a Dearth of Slaves: Twentieth Century Solutions to the Abolition of Slavery”

Comment: David Brion Davis, Sterling Professor Emeritus, and Gilder Lehrman Center Director Emeritus, Yale University

12:00-1:30 Lunch

1:30-4:00 Session: Slave Labor in Totalitarian Regimes

Michael Allen, University of Connecticut
“Seeing Like a State with Cataracts: Slavery and Political Religion”

David J. Nordlander, Library of Congress
“The Gulag as a Reinvention of Serfdom in Soviet Russia”

Comments: Amy Chua, Yale University Law School
Laura Engelstein, Department of History, Yale University

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23

8:00-9:00 Continental Breakfast

9:00-11:45 Session: Modern Slavery: The World, the U. S., and Cuba in Comparative Perspective

Kevin Bales, University of Surrey Roehampton and Free the Slaves
“Testing a Theory of Modern Slavery”

David Oshinsky, University of Texas
“Forced Labor in the 19th Century South: The Story of Parchman Farm”

Rebecca Scott, University of Michigan
“Constraints on Coercion: Labor and Citizenship in Post-Emancipation Cuba and Louisiana” ( Abstract )

Comment: Jonathan Holloway, Yale University

12:00-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:30 Session: Modern Slavery in Africa

Jeffrey Ferguson, Amherst College
“African American Intellectuals and the Liberian Labor Crisis, 1929-31”

Francis Deng, Brookings Institution
“Green is the Color of the Masters: The Legacy of Slavery and the Crisis of National Identity in Modern Sudan”

Comment: Lamin Sanneh, Yale University

3:45- 5:00 Summary Comment

Laura J. Lederer, U. S. State Department Office of Human Trafficking
“Force, Fraud, and Coercion: Current Human Trafficking in Historical Perspective”