WORKSHOP

The teaching workshop will focus on the curricular or more broadly educational applications of the academic work and creative productions under discussion throughout the colloquium, especially on devising ways for students to engage in supervised research and other modes of inquiry into these labor practices in their localities. We have designed the workshop to take the insights and exchanges from the previous day’s colloquium to a laboratory setting, where we all will participate in exploring and developing models of courses, extra-curricular projects, and public programming that investigate the use of convict leases, chain gangs, and prison industries in the development of the modern South.

The workshop is organized around this central question: Once we establish what we know about the history of unfree labor, how can we make that knowledge accessible to our students and our community neighbors and likewise enlist them in producing greater public understanding of this history and its implications today? It is generally the case that people in the South are unaware of the degree to which they are indebted to the post-emancipation use of coerced or unfree labor to build the agricultural, industrial, and transportation infrastructure of the region today.

The colloquium and teaching workshop are structured for engaged conversation. Therefore we are limiting the number of available online and in-person seats to both the colloquium and the teaching workshop.