Slavery and the Humanities

I'm delighted to say that I'm going to be at the University of Florida at the end of the week to talk about slavery and southern universities, as part of the University of Florida's humanities center discussion on grand questions for the humanities.  While much of the recent talk has been about the important and positive role that humanities can serve, a large part of my talk will be the ways that history and philosophy were used to justify slavery in universities before the War.  But I'll also be talking about how some faculty and students challenged slavery, including in unexpected places like Lexington, Charlottesville, and Tuscaloosa.  And towards the end of the talk I am going to broaden this into a discussion of the possibilities as well as dangers of the humanities.  Obviously Melville, Emerson, Whitman, and Stowe will be making an appearance — and some characters less spoken about in humanities circles, like David Walker.