Slavery

Directly north of The Hermitage, on a slight rise at the edge of the wooded bottomland near a creek, investigators confirmed what they had seen on a historic map: a cemetery where an estimated 28 bodies of enslaved individuals who lived on the property during the Jacksonian era are interred. Part of the research came from efforts by the Vanderbilt Institute for Spatial Research, directed by Steve Wernke, professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at Vanderbilt. Read More

This semester’s inaugural Vanderbilt History Seminar will explore the work of artist Kara Walker and the memory of slavery. The Sept. 30 lecture corresponds with the Frist Art Museum’s ongoing exhibition "Kara Walker: Cut to the Quick" and the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery’s "Sympathetic Magic: Works of Faith, Healing and Transformation," which includes Walker's works. Read More

Vanderbilt University has become the newest member of the Universities Studying Slavery consortium as part of its reinvigorated commitment to confront racial injustice while working toward a more inclusive and welcoming campus community. Read More

Daniel Genkins, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of History, worked with the Data Science Institute to build a machine learning pipeline to process digitized ecclesiastical records that touch on the lives of people of African descent, both free and enslaved, in the early modern Atlantic. Read More

A digital hub to be housed at Michigan State University will link Vanderbilt's Slave Societies Digital Archive to eight other digital collections of slave records around the country. Read More

The American Council of Learned Societies has awarded a digital extension grant to a project historian Jane Landers has led since 2003 to preserve endangered African and Afro-descended slave records. Read More

Jane Landers, a Vanderbilt history professor who studies slavery from its inception to abolition, will give a free talk Feb. 26 at the Williamson County Public Library. Read More

History professor Jane Landers has been appointed to an international scientific committee working to identify important historic sites related to the slave trade. Read More

Scholars interested in saving fast-disappearing slave records with digital archiving will gather at Vanderbilt's Jean and Alexander Heard Library Oct. 15-17 to compare notes. Read More

Vanderbilt political scientist Cecilia Mo has won a $1 million grant from the Labor Department to fight human trafficking. Read More

Vanderbilt historian Jane Landers appears in the first episode of a new PBS documentary series about the history of African Americans, hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Read More

This week on VUCast, Vanderbilt’s weekly newscast  highlighting research, experts, students, sports and everything Vanderbilt: Provocative Politics: the power of a sensational ad See the Civil War through the eyes of those who stayed at home Vanderbilt Emergency Medicine goes hip hop [vucastblurb]… Read More