CBH Talk | Judith Giesberg Discusses “Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families”
Join historian Judith Giesberg for a discussion of her groundbreaking book, Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families, which brings to light the resilient efforts of formerly enslaved people to reunite with family members torn apart by slavery. Drawing from the extraordinary archive she founded - containing nearly 5,000 “information wanted” ads and letters placed in newspapers after 1865 - Giesberg uncovers the heartbreaking stories of mothers, fathers, siblings, and spouses who were separated at slave auctions and who later searched for their loved ones, sometimes for generations.
These letters and advertisements typically spent decades buried in the storage of local historical societies or on microfilm reels that time forgot. In Last Seen, Giesberg weaves deeply personal narratives with in-depth historical research, highlighting the determination of those who refused to let the horrors of family separation define their futures. Through these stories, she sheds new light on a vital, little explored, chapter in American history.
Giesberg is led in conversation by Columbia University historian Stephanie McCurry, whose book Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, was a 2011 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History.
This program is presented in connection with CBH's upcoming exhibition "Trace/s: Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn," opening on January 30.
Participants
Judith Giesberg is professor of history and Robert M. Birmingham chair in the humanities at Villanova University. She is the founder and director of the Last Seen archive, and the author of several books on Civil War history, including Army at Home, Emilie Davis’s Civil War, and Last Seen.
Stephanie McCurry is the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History in Honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower at Columbia University. Before Columbia, Prior, she served on the faculty of the University of California, San Diego, Northwestern University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2005 she has been an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer. She is the author of Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History, and most recently, Women’s War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War.
Join historian Judith Giesberg for a discussion of her groundbreaking book, Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families, which brings to light the resilient efforts of formerly enslaved people to reunite with family members torn apart by slavery. Drawing from the extraordinary archive she founded - containing nearly 5,000 “information wanted” ads and letters placed in newspapers after 1865 - Giesberg uncovers the heartbreaking stories of mothers, fathers, siblings, and spouses who were separated at slave auctions and who later searched for their loved ones, sometimes for generations.
These letters and advertisements typically spent decades buried in the storage of local historical societies or on microfilm reels that time forgot. In Last Seen, Giesberg weaves deeply personal narratives with in-depth historical research, highlighting the determination of those who refused to let the horrors of family separation define their futures. Through these stories, she sheds new light on a vital, little explored, chapter in American history.
Giesberg is led in conversation by Columbia University historian Stephanie McCurry, whose book Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, was a 2011 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History.
This program is presented in connection with CBH's upcoming exhibition "Trace/s: Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn," opening on January 30.
Participants
Judith Giesberg is professor of history and Robert M. Birmingham chair in the humanities at Villanova University. She is the founder and director of the Last Seen archive, and the author of several books on Civil War history, including Army at Home, Emilie Davis’s Civil War, and Last Seen.
Stephanie McCurry is the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History in Honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower at Columbia University. Before Columbia, Prior, she served on the faculty of the University of California, San Diego, Northwestern University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2005 she has been an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer. She is the author of Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History, and most recently, Women’s War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War.
Brooklyn Public Library - Center for Brooklyn History MM/DD/YYYY 60