Atlantic World Connections speaker series featuring Dr. Margaret Newell
Hosted by Atlantic Black Box
Wednesday, December 18 at 6:00 pm ET
Online
Join us next Wednesday as Dr. Margaret Ellen Newell of The Ohio State University’s Department of History shares insights from her award-winning book Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery and from her subsequent research.
In this important talk, Professor Newell will discuss the hidden history of Indigenous enslavement in New England, where Native Americans formed the ‘charter generation’ of the enslaved, outnumbering Africans until after 1700. Describing the English colonies’ practice of enslavement, Dr. Newell will help us to understand the impact of slavery on Native communities and family as she the stories of a number of enslaved people with Maine connections.
Margaret Ellen Newell is Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History at The Ohio State University. Her most recent book, Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery (Cornell University Press), won the 2016 James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians for the best book on the history of race relations in the U.S., and the 2016 Peter Gomes Memorial Prize for nonfiction from the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Her recent articles include “’The Rising of the Indians’; Or, the Native American Revolution of (16)’76,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 80 (April 2023); “Sarah Chauqum: Eighteenth Century Rhode Island and Connecticut,” in As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas, ed. Erica Ball, Tatiana Seijas, and Terri Snyder (Cambridge University Press, 2020); “In the Borderlands of Race and Freedom (and Genre): Embedded Indian and African Slave Testimony in Eighteenth-Century New England,” Hearing Enslaved Voices: African and Indian Slave Testimony in French and British America, 1700-1848 ed. Sophie White and Trevor Burnard (Routledge, 2020).
Presently, Margaret Newell is Principal Investigator for a multiyear Mellon-funded research project on African American and Native American citizenship, 1780-1950.
She has appeared in a documentary on Indian slavery and on the podcasts Ben Franklin’s World and Teaching the Hard History of Slavery. She has written Op-Eds on slavery and race for the Providence Journal and Bulletin and The Columbus Dispatch.
On Monday, January 6 from 5:00 – 6:00 pm ET, Dr. Margaret Newell will return to share her research methods, sources, and tips with ABB members at our Research Forum. If you’re not yet an ABB member, join here!
