This series is offered in conjunction with America 250 and is cosponsored by the following units:
- Center for Latin American Studies
- College of Arts and Sciences
- Department of African American and African Studies
- Department of Political Science
- Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Panel 5: The Meaning(s) of American Freedom in a Global Context
Panelists:
- Emily Sneff, Independent Scholar
- Adam McNeil, Notre Dame
Moderator:
- María Esther Hammack
"When the Declaration of Independence Was News"
Abstract:
Highlighting research from her new book, Dr. Sneff will explore the dissemination of the Declaration around the Atlantic in the summer and fall of 1776. The Declaration was met with unique circumstances everywhere it went, and people modified and critiqued the text along the way. The questions of who experienced the news of independence, when, and how reveal an expansive and complex history of a critical moment in the American Revolution.
About Emily Sneff:
Dr. Emily Sneff is an early American historian and leading expert on the Declaration of Independence. She earned her Ph.D. in History from William & Mary. She is a consulting curator for exhibitions marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration at the Museum of the American Revolution and Historic Trappe.
"Enslaved Afro-Virginian Women in a Revolutionary World"
Abstract:
Artwork of an African American woman wearing a dress, coat, and hat
Virginia’s Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, declared liberty to rebel-owned enslaved men willing to reach British lines and join his Ethiopian Regiment. Unbeknownst to Dunmore, hundreds of enslaved Afro-Virginian women joined his ranks over the next nine months. The American Revolution provided Black women the greatest chance to escape bondage until the U.S. Civil War. Joining Dunmore’s Black recruits, though, were numerous Loyalist owned enslaved women, whose enslavers left Virginia as opposed to remaining on land and sustaining assaults from Patriot forces and citizens of the Tidewater. “Loyalist-Owned Enslaved Afro-Virginian Women in a Revolutionary World,” explores the labors and lived experiences of enslaved women bound by White Loyalist-Virginians. My presentation will underscore how enslaved women’s labor contributed not only to socially reproducing the social worlds of their enslavers but also to how their presence behind British lines in British-controlled cities undermined the possibilities for Afro-Virginians voluntarily choosing to seek refuge behind British lines.
About Adam McNeil:
Adam Xavier McNeil is an Assistant Professor of American Studies in the Department of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. McNeil is a historian of the American Revolution, with a focus on Black women's experiences in the Revolutionary and Founding Eras. He is currently writing his first monograph, Contested Liberty: Fugitive Women and the Shadow of Reenslavement and Displacement in Revolutionary Virginia, under contract with the University of Virginia Press. Contested Liberty is the first book to analyze Afro-Virginian women’s pursuit of freedom during the American Revolution. McNeil's scholarly contributions can also be found as a co-host of both New Books in African American Studies and New Books in Revolutionary America, podcasts platformed by the New Books Network.
Before coming to Notre Dame, McNeil was a postdoctoral research associate and lecturer at the University of Virginia's Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies. McNeil also serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Black Military Studies and previously held leadership positions in the Association of Black Women's Historians and the African American Intellectual History Society.
