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Liberated Africans and Digital Humanities: African Diaspora Reconsidered

While the transatlantic slave trade lasted nearly four centuries, over one quarter, or 2.9 million slaves, disembarked after 1807 in the Americas and to a lesser extent in Africa. About 174,000 of this 2.9 million were “re-captured” by naval vessels, mainly British, charged with suppressing this traffic. These were the “Liberated Africans.” As these Africans crossed the boundaries of slavery and freedom, they reshaped their identities as they faced foreign systems of race and ethnic classification across imperial borders. The locally rooted and trans-nationally-linked meanings of nineteenth-century slavery and freedom, as well as race and ethnicity, will be the overarching themes of this meeting. By gathering scholars experienced with sharing digital research, the first concrete goal of this conference is examining the use of databases, Geographical Information Systems, sound recordings, online storage, and other digital tools to maximize collaborative research as well as education and outreach for African Diaspora Studies.

The conference organizers gratefully acknowledge the generous co-sponsorship of the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), the UC Irvine Humanities Collective, the Huntington Library, the UC-Cuba Academic Initiative, the Spatial History Project (Stanford University), the UC Los Angeles Department of History, the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies, the UC Irvine Department of African American Studies, and the UC Irvine Department of History.

All sessions are free and open to the public. For further information, please contact the UCI Department of History at (949) 824-6521 or history@uci.edu.