Talk Title: "Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation at Georgetown”

Speaker: Adam Rothman, Georgetown University

Abstract: Many American universities and colleges are examining their own histories of slavery as part of a "reckoning" with the past. A notable example is Georgetown University in Washington, DC, a school with a long Jesuit and Catholic tradition and deep ties to slavery. Since 2016, Georgetown has been in the national spotlight for its ongoing "Slavery,, Memory, and Reconciliation" initiative, which has involved a complex relationship between Georgetown, the Society of Jesus, and descendants of the people enslaved and sold by the Jesuits in the 19th century. In this presentation, Professor Adam Rothman, Director of Georgetown's Center for the Study of Slavery and Its Legacies, traces Georgetown's history of slavery and its contemporary reverberations.

Bio: Adam Rothman is Professor of History at Georgetown University and the Director of Georgetown’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Its Legacies. He is the author of Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South and Beyond Freedom’s Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery, which won the American Civil War Museum’s book award. Rothman is also the co-editor of Facing Georgetown’s History and the curator of the Georgetown Slavery Archive website, a digital repository of archival materials relating to the history of Georgetown, the Society of Jesus, and slavery. He was a member of Georgetown’s Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation. He teaches courses on 19th-century American history, Atlantic history, the history of slavery, and archival theory and practice