African Diaspora historian and author Dr. Sylviane Diouf will deliver the 2019 McPherson-Mitchell Lecture in Southern History on Monday, Jan. 28 at 5 p.m. at Troy University’s Crosby Theater.
Founded in 2000, the McPherson-Mitchell Lecture in Southern History is named in honor of former Troy University History Department faculty members Milton McPherson and Norma Mitchell. Lecturers are historians who conduct research in a variety of subject areas and time periods in Southern history.
Diouf, who received her PhD from Université Denis Diderot in Paris, is an independent historian of the African Diaspora who serves as visiting scholar at Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice.
She is an award-winning author of 11 books, including the text underlying her McPherson-Mitchell Lecture, “Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Cotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America.”
Diouf’s lecture, titled “The Clotilda, African Town and Beyond,” will incorporate documents and photographs to share the unique experience and legacy of the people who were on the last slave ship to the U.S., describe and explain the unexpected developments that brought this story to the forefront in 2018.
