About this Event

The cultural memory of southern plantations has long been clouded by myth. A recent reckoning with the centrality of slavery to American history, however, has emphasized their reality as spaces of enslavement, exploitation, and violence. Yet even this reckoning obscures what these sites meant to so many forced to live and labor on them: plantations were Black homes as much as white. And as contemporary Black Americans demand a voice in how these sites interpret their ancestors' stories, enslaved people's homemaking emerges as a crucial part of southern history. Join Dr. Whitney Nell Stewart for a conversation about the complicated history and living legacies of southern plantations.

About the Speaker 

Dr. Whitney Nell Stewart is a historian of slavery and the American South. Along with several articles and essays, she is author of the award-winning book This Is Our Home: Slavery and Struggle on Southern Plantations. Her work has been supported by organizations like the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian, the Huntington Library, and Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library. Stewart is an associate professor of history and faculty of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also a practicing public historian, and most recently served as Historian and Co-Author of the National Park Service's Historic Context Survey of Louisiana's Great River Road.