Organizers
James Sidbury (PI) is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the History Department of Rice University. He is the author of Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel’s Virginia, 1730-1810 (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic (Oxford University Press, 2007), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters, and he is co-editor (with Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Matt D. Childs) of The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
Daniel B. Domingues da Silva is an associate professor of African history at the History Department and director of undergraduate studies at the Center for African and African American Studies of Rice University. He is the author of The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780-1867 (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and co-manager of the renowned website Slave Voyages. His research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and published in peer-reviewed journals such as African Diaspora and the Journal of African History. Domingues supervises students at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and routinely teaches courses on the history of early and modern Africa as well as on the history of the African Diaspora.
Jeffrey Fleisher is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Rice University. He is the co-author (with K. de Luna) of Speaking with Substance: Methods of Language and Materials in African History (Springer, 2019) and the author of dozens of scholarly articles. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His regional specialty is on the ancient Swahili coast of eastern Africa and his current collaborative interdisciplinary research project in Zambia aims to reconstruct the cultural history of mobility in a region often considered beyond the frontiers of surrounding Iron Age kingdoms and states. He also directed excavations at African American sites in Houston since 2009, including urban sites in Houston’s Freedman’s Town and the Levi Jordan Plantation.
Molly Morgan is a full-time lecturer in the Department of Anthropology. She is co-director of the Varner-Hogg and Levi-Jordan Plantation Sites Archaeological Project in Brazoria County, Texas. Her past archaeological work has been funded by agencies including the National Science Foundation, National Geographic, and Fulbright. She teaches upper-level anthropology courses, including on archaeological field methods and the archaeology of slavery and the African Diaspora.
Anthony B. Pinn is Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and professor of religion. He is the founding director of the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning, and the inaugural director of the Center for African and African American Studies. Pinn is also Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa. His publications include Introducing African American Religion (Routledge, 2013) and Black Religion and Aesthetics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). He is co-editor of five book series including Studies in Black Religion and Culture (Bloomsbury).
Rice University Participants
Lynne Lee, PhD Candidate, Department of Art History, Rice University
James Myers, PhD Candidate, Department of History, Rice University
Texas Participants
Sam Collins, Texas Historical Commission
Portia Hopkins, History Postdoctoral Fellow, Rice University
Jamaica Participants
Kenneth Bilby, Author of True-Born Maroons, Smithsonian Institution
Chief Michael Grizzle, Chief of Trelawny Town/Flagstaff Maroons
Colonel Wallace Sterling, Colonel of Moore Town Maroons
Ghana Participants
Hermann von Hesse, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Kofi Baku, Professor of History, University of Ghana, Legon
Samuel Acquaah, Ghana Museums and Monuments Board
Brazil Participants
Emerson Luis Ramos, Quilombola, Quilombo do Bracuí, Rio de Janeiro
Monica Lima, Associate Professor, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Miriam Bondim, Researcher, Municipal Museum of Mangaratiba, Rio de Janeiro