Manisha Sinha

discusses

The Slave's Cause:
A History of Abolition

This event includes a book signing

Date

Mar
25
Friday
March 25, 2016
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store, the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, and Mass Humanities welcome University of Massachusetts, Amherst, professor MANISHA SINHA for a discussion of her book The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition.

About The Slave's Cause

Received historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved found common ground in causes ranging from feminism and utopian socialism to anti-imperialism and efforts to defend the rights of labor. Drawing on extensive archival research, including newly discovered letters and pamphlets, Sinha documents the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the centrality of slave resistance in shaping the ideology and tactics of abolition. This book is a comprehensive new history of the abolition movement in a transnational context. It illustrates how the abolitionist vision ultimately linked the slave’s cause to the struggle to redefine American democracy and human rights across the globe.

Praise

“In emphasizing abolitionism’s long historical trajectory, its international perspective, and its interracial character, Sinha situates her story firmly within the most up-to-date trends in historical writing; and with her extensive research and broad command of the era, she has produced a work of high originality and broad popular appeal.” —Eric Foner, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery

"[A] comprehensive survey of the abolitionist movement in Colonial and independent America . . . Covers a great deal of ground well. . . . Wide-ranging and admirably ambitious." —Kirkus Reviews

Manisha Sinha
Manisha Sinha

Manisha Sinha

Manisha Sinha is a Professor of Afro-American Studies and History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (University of North Carolina Press, 2000) which was named one of the ten best books on slavery recently and The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (Yale University Press, 2016). She is also a contributing author of The Abolitionist Imagination (Harvard University Press, 2012). She is a co-editor of the two volume African American Mosaic: A Documentary History from the African Slave Trade to the Twenty First Century (Prentice Hall, 2004) and Contested Democracy: Freedom, Race and Power in American History (Columbia University Press, 2007). In 2011, she was awarded the Chancellor's Medal, the highest honor bestowed on faculty at the University of Massachusetts and delivered the Distinguished Faculty Lecture. In 2006, she was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society and in 2003, she was appointed to the Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lecture Series. Sinha is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

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Co-Sponsored by the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research

The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University supports research on the history and culture of people of African descent the world over and provides a forum for collaboration and the ongoing exchange of ideas. Learn more at hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu.

Co-Sponsored by Mass Humanities

Mass Humanities

 

Mass Humanities creates opportunities for the people of Massachusetts to transform their lives and build a more equitable Commonwealth through the humanities. Learn more at masshumanities.org.

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Featured event books will be for sale at the event for 20% off. Thank you for supporting this author series with your purchases.
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