Revised 11 November
Wednesday 18 November, 6pm
University College London Institute of the Americas
& Legacies of British Slave-ownership project
Seminar
Canada and the Black Atlantic – slavery and freedom in the new world
Talks by
Sean Creighton:
British and Canadian Black History connections
and Dr Afua Cooper:
Slavery and Freedom – The Role of Canada in the Black Atlantic
James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Studies
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Dr Cooper will also read extracts from her book of poems Copper Women
Chair: Dr Tony McCulloch
Senior Fellow in North American Studies
Free but booking necessary:
Dr. Afua Cooper is a scholar, historian, poet, and social and cultural commentator on African Canadian culture, Black women’s history, gender, slavery, abolition, and freedom, Black literatures, and education. She has conducted research on African-descended people and their culture across Canada, and internationally in Jamaica, France, the United States, Britain, Senegal, and Ethiopia. She is author of The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Slavery in Canada and the Burning of Old Montreal, Copper Woman and Other Poems, and My Name is Phillis Wheatley, and co-author of We’re Rooted Here and they Can’t Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History She has curated and worked on six exhibits including, The Underground Railroad, Next Stop Freedom, Enslaved Africans in Upper Canada, and The Transatlantic Slave Trade. Her work on Black Canadian history and culture has made her the leading Canadian scholar in such fields. She has helped to centre dub poetry in Canada and beyond, and cofounded the Dub Poets Collective. Since 2011 she has been James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Studies at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is founder and chair of the Canadian Black Studies Association. Dr Cooper is in London for the launch at SOAS on 17 November of her daughter’s novel for teenagers about the medical condition fistula.
Sean Creighton is an independent historian who works on British black history. At Dr Cooper’s invitation he gave a paper on the connections between Canadian and British black histories at the Conference of the Canadian Black Studies Association in May. His father was Canadian. He will be giving a paper on those connections in the long-18th Century at the British Society for 18th Studies Annual Conference in Oxford in January.
PDF format flier can be downloaded here Afua Cooper 18 November
