History’s Kelley Lecture Featuring Judy Giesberg - Listening to a Very Loud Archive: The Last Seen Project’s 5000 Stories of Slavery and Survival
This talk will highlight the collaborative work of students and scholars to recover and archive the stories of formerly enslaved people’s search for family after freedom. It will introduce readers to the Last Seen Project Archive of more than 5000 information wanted and lost friends’ advertisements published in Black-owned newspapers after the Civil War. Each ad tells the story of a family separated in slavery and their search for one another afterwards. The talk will take listeners along on a journey of discovery of this little-known history and explain its significance to our understanding of the nation’s past—and present.
ĢTV the Speaker: Judith Giesberg, PhD, holds the Robert M. Birmingham Chair in the Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Villanova University. She is the author of six books on the social history of the Civil War. Giesberg directs a number of digital projects that make primary sources available to teachers, scholars, museum professionals, and genealogists. In 2017, Dr. Giesberg launched Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery, a project that collects and digitizes “Information Wanted” ads taken out by ex-slaves looking for family members lost in the domestic slave trade.
Lecture is free and open to the public, no tickets needed. Reception immediately following.