Keywords in Practice: K4BL Witnessing Black Life & Community

In 2020, a group of scholars embarked on a journey to open a door into the lives of enslaved Africans on the Gulf Coast. Five years later, Keywords for Black Louisiana, part of the award-winning LifexCode: Digital Humanities Against Enclosure ecosystem, has created a blueprint for mapping Black live across time and space. This talk explores the past of Black resistance and the present role histories of slavery play in the fight for a just and humane world.

Jessica Marie Johnson is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, August 2020). Her work explores histories of slavery, African diaspora, and Black life in the Americas.

Sponsored by UVA's Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship in Caribbean Literatures, in association with the Scholars' Lab, and the Departments of English; Africana Studies; History; and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.