A Conversation about The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution

Please join us for a discussion of Julius S. Scott's seminal book, The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution. Winner of the 2019 Stone Book Award from the Museum of African American History, the work presents a remarkable intellectual history of the slave revolts that made the modern revolutionary era. The Common Wind is a gripping and colorful account of the intercontinental networks that tied together the free and enslaved masses of the New World.

Featuring remarks by Julius S. Scott (University of Michigan), Laurent Dubois (Duke University), Rebecca J. Scott (University of Michigan), and Stephen Ward (University of Michigan). Chaired by Matthew J. Countryman (University of Michigan).

Free and open to the public.

Presented by the Department of History, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS), and Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. Additional support from the Kalt Fund for African American and African History.

Speakers

Julius S. Scott
Lecturer, Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan

Professor Scott is author of The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution (2018). Based on his influential but previously unpublished 1986 Duke University doctoral dissertation, The Common Wind has earned numerous accolades, including the MAAH Stone Book Award and the Special Achievement Award from the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.

Laurent Dubois
Marcello Lotti Professor of Romance Studies and History, Duke University

Professor Dubois specializes in the history and culture of the Atlantic world, with a focus on the Caribbean and particularly Haiti. Recent books include Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (2012) and The Banjo: America’s African Instrument (2016). In 2009 he edited, with Julius S. Scott, Origins of the Black Atlantic. Professor Dubois is faculty director of the Forum for Scholars and Publics at Duke University.

Rebecca J. Scott
Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Law, University of Michigan

Professor Scott's research centers on the intersection of law and slavery, both in the United States and the Caribbean. Her books include Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery (2008) and Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (with Frederick Cooper and Thomas C. Holt; 2014). Professor Scott is the recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Stephen Ward
Associate Professor, Afroamerican & African Studies and the Residential College, University of Michigan

Professor Ward's teaching and writing focus on African American political thought and social movements, particularly the Black Power movement, and the evolution of cities since World War II, with an emphasis on grassroots activism and community-based approaches to urban redevelopment. He is the author of In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs (2016). Professor Ward is faculty director of the U-M Semester in Detroit Program.

Matthew J. Countryman (chair)
Associate Professor of History, American Culture, University of Michigan

Professor Countryman's work centers on twentieth-century African American social movements. He is the author of Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (2007). Professor Countryman is chair of the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies.