In|Formation Year - Injustice
Site: University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)
The programming for Injustice will include the following components:
- Public Lecture
- Postdoctoral fellowship
- Distributed Curricular and Research Project
Injustice Partners
- University of Michigan
- Institute for the Humanities
- Rackham Graduate School
- School of Information
- Law in Slavery and Freedom Project
Public Lecture Event > (Un)Making the Archive: Indian Vassals, African Slaves, and Web-Based Tools > Rachel Sarah O'Toole
January 23, 4:00 PM EST
Osterman Common Room
University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities
202 South Thayer Street
Ann Arbor, MI
Rachel Sarah O’Toole, Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine and HASTAC Postdoctoral Fellow with the University of Michigan Law in Slavery and Freedom Project, will discuss how colonial jurists created “Indians” as vassals and constructed Africans and their descendants as beings outside of the body politic. To defend communal water rights or to argue for manumission, indigenous and African-descent peoples inscribed themselves within the parameters of the colonial archive, making Andean or Diasporic perspectives difficult to ascertain. Transcribed documents available on web sites, digital imaging, and historical databases open the possibilities of unmaking the colonial archive in order to discern other meanings within the records. (The lecture will be available as a podcast shortly after the event.)
Commentary by
- Martha Jones, Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Center for Afroamerican & African Studies and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Law School, University of Michigan
- John King, Professor in the School of Information and Vice Provost for Academic Information, University of Michigan
- Rebecca Scott, Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Law, University of Michigan
About the participants
Rachel Sarah O'Toole is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine specializing in Colonial Peru, the early modern Atlantic World. and the African Diaspora. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001 and her publications include "Danger in the Convent: Colonial Demons, Idolatrous Indias, and Bewitching Negras in Santa Clara (Trujillo del Perú)," Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 7:1 (Spring 2006) and "In a War against the Spanish": Andean Protection & African Resistance on the Northern Peruvian Coast," The Americas 63:1 (July 2006).
Martha Jones is assistant professor in the department of History and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and visiting assistant professor in the Law School at the University of Michigan. After a decade as a public interest litigator in New York City with organizations including MFY Legal Services and The HIV Law Project, Jones joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 2001. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University and a J.D. from the City University of New York School of Law. Her first book, "All Bound Up Together": The Woman Question in African-American Public Culture, 1830-1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007, forthcoming) is an intellectual and cultural history of black women's public lives in nineteenth-century America. Her current work explores the law of slavery and freedom in the Atlantic world through an examination of the migrations of Saint-Domingue's slaves in the era after the Haitian revolution.
John King is Professor in the School of Information and Vice Provost for Academic Information at the University of Michigan. Formerly, he served as Dean of the School of Information. His research concerns the development of high-level requirements for information systems design and implementation in institutionalized production sectors such as common carrier communications, logistics and transport, health care, criminal courts, electric power, and electronic commerce. He has authored over 150 scholarly papers and books from his research. Dr. King served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Information Systems Research from 1993-8, and has also taught at the Harvard Business School and the University of California, Irvine. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Administration from UCI.
Rebecca Scott is Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. She works on the history of slavery and emancipation, and on Atlantic itineraries in the age of revolution. Her most recent book, Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery (Harvard University Press, 2005), won the Frederick Douglass Prize from the Gilder-Lehrman Institute, and the John Hope Franklin Prize from the American Studies Association. She is co-director, with Martha Jones and Jean Hebrard, of the Law in Slavery and Freedom Project at the University of Michigan.
Postdoctoral Fellowship & Distributed Curricular and Research Initiative > The Law in Slavery and Freedom Project > 2006-2007
The University of Michigan will also focus on the topic of injustice by bringing a postdoctoral fellow to the Institute for the Humanities, in cooperation with the Rackham Graduate School and the Provost, who will contribute to Michigan’s Law in Slavery and Freedom Project. That project is a distributed curricular and research initiative which Michigan has developed in collaboration with The Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France, the University of Cologne, Germany, the University of Campinas, Brazil, and the Centro Juan Marinello in Cuba. Students from these institutions may participate in internet courses taught by faculty from all sites and participate in online discussions of readings on the topic of law and slavery in the Atlantic world. The research agenda is set by faculty who work on slavery, law and emancipation in regions from the American South all the way down the Atlantic coast to Brazil, and conferences are mounted at various sites, the next major conference being “Slavery, and Freedom in the Atlantic World: Statutes, Science and the Seas”, co-sponsored by the University of Michigan and the University of Windsor and taking place in Spring 2006. Michigan has chosen to contribute to this global initiative because we see it as one that could only happen through online technologies. And because in the hands of this project these technologies provide a counterweight to an historical inequality in the production of knowledge, whereby knowledge often continues to be generated in the global north, while the global south, limited in resources and mired in neo-colonial attitudes, either waits for knowledge to passively trickle down or finds that the new knowledge it generates is not properly disseminated throughout the north. Important knowledge is being produced in the field of Salvery and the Law in places like Brazil and Cuba by scholarls from those regions. The Law and Slavery Project, coordinated by Professors Rebecca Scott and Martha Jones at the University of Michigan, Professor Michael Zeuske at the University of Cologne, Professor Jean Hébrard at the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Professors Silvia Lara and Sidney Chalhoub at the University of Campinas, and Professor Marial Iglesias at the University of Havana, is an environment in which north and south, Europe and America, generate knowledge jointly and share it with both faculty and students. Asymmetrical lines of knowledge production and dissemination are thus circumvented thanks to the project’s use of new technology, and the global south is recognized as an active and equal player. Globalized communication between faculty and students is likewise enhanced.
Site: University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)
The programming for Injustice will include the following components:
- Public Lecture
- Postdoctoral fellowship
- Distributed Curricular and Research Project
Injustice Partners
- University of Michigan
- Institute for the Humanities
- Rackham Graduate School
- School of Information
- Law in Slavery and Freedom Project
Public Lecture Event > (Un)Making the Archive: Indian Vassals, African Slaves, and Web-Based Tools > Rachel Sarah O'Toole
January 23, 4:00 PM EST
Osterman Common Room
University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities
202 South Thayer Street
Ann Arbor, MI
Rachel Sarah O’Toole, Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine and HASTAC Postdoctoral Fellow with the University of Michigan Law in Slavery and Freedom Project, will discuss how colonial jurists created “Indians” as vassals and constructed Africans and their descendants as beings outside of the body politic. To defend communal water rights or to argue for manumission, indigenous and African-descent peoples inscribed themselves within the parameters of the colonial archive, making Andean or Diasporic perspectives difficult to ascertain. Transcribed documents available on web sites, digital imaging, and historical databases open the possibilities of unmaking the colonial archive in order to discern other meanings within the records. (The lecture will be available as a podcast shortly after the event.)
Commentary by
- Martha Jones, Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Center for Afroamerican & African Studies and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Law School, University of Michigan
- John King, Professor in the School of Information and Vice Provost for Academic Information, University of Michigan
- Rebecca Scott, Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Law, University of Michigan
About the participants
Rachel Sarah O'Toole is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine specializing in Colonial Peru, the early modern Atlantic World. and the African Diaspora. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001 and her publications include "Danger in the Convent: Colonial Demons, Idolatrous Indias, and Bewitching Negras in Santa Clara (Trujillo del Perú)," Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 7:1 (Spring 2006) and "In a War against the Spanish": Andean Protection & African Resistance on the Northern Peruvian Coast," The Americas 63:1 (July 2006).
Martha Jones is assistant professor in the department of History and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and visiting assistant professor in the Law School at the University of Michigan. After a decade as a public interest litigator in New York City with organizations including MFY Legal Services and The HIV Law Project, Jones joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 2001. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University and a J.D. from the City University of New York School of Law. Her first book, "All Bound Up Together": The Woman Question in African-American Public Culture, 1830-1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007, forthcoming) is an intellectual and cultural history of black women's public lives in nineteenth-century America. Her current work explores the law of slavery and freedom in the Atlantic world through an examination of the migrations of Saint-Domingue's slaves in the era after the Haitian revolution.
John King is Professor in the School of Information and Vice Provost for Academic Information at the University of Michigan. Formerly, he served as Dean of the School of Information. His research concerns the development of high-level requirements for information systems design and implementation in institutionalized production sectors such as common carrier communications, logistics and transport, health care, criminal courts, electric power, and electronic commerce. He has authored over 150 scholarly papers and books from his research. Dr. King served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Information Systems Research from 1993-8, and has also taught at the Harvard Business School and the University of California, Irvine. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Administration from UCI.
Rebecca Scott is Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. She works on the history of slavery and emancipation, and on Atlantic itineraries in the age of revolution. Her most recent book, Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba After Slavery (Harvard University Press, 2005), won the Frederick Douglass Prize from the Gilder-Lehrman Institute, and the John Hope Franklin Prize from the American Studies Association. She is co-director, with Martha Jones and Jean Hebrard, of the Law in Slavery and Freedom Project at the University of Michigan.
Postdoctoral Fellowship & Distributed Curricular and Research Initiative > The Law in Slavery and Freedom Project > 2006-2007
The University of Michigan will also focus on the topic of injustice by bringing a postdoctoral fellow to the Institute for the Humanities, in cooperation with the Rackham Graduate School and the Provost, who will contribute to Michigan’s Law in Slavery and Freedom Project. That project is a distributed curricular and research initiative which Michigan has developed in collaboration with The Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France, the University of Cologne, Germany, the University of Campinas, Brazil, and the Centro Juan Marinello in Cuba. Students from these institutions may participate in internet courses taught by faculty from all sites and participate in online discussions of readings on the topic of law and slavery in the Atlantic world. The research agenda is set by faculty who work on slavery, law and emancipation in regions from the American South all the way down the Atlantic coast to Brazil, and conferences are mounted at various sites, the next major conference being “Slavery, and Freedom in the Atlantic World: Statutes, Science and the Seas”, co-sponsored by the University of Michigan and the University of Windsor and taking place in Spring 2006. Michigan has chosen to contribute to this global initiative because we see it as one that could only happen through online technologies. And because in the hands of this project these technologies provide a counterweight to an historical inequality in the production of knowledge, whereby knowledge often continues to be generated in the global north, while the global south, limited in resources and mired in neo-colonial attitudes, either waits for knowledge to passively trickle down or finds that the new knowledge it generates is not properly disseminated throughout the north. Important knowledge is being produced in the field of Salvery and the Law in places like Brazil and Cuba by scholarls from those regions. The Law and Slavery Project, coordinated by Professors Rebecca Scott and Martha Jones at the University of Michigan, Professor Michael Zeuske at the University of Cologne, Professor Jean Hébrard at the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Professors Silvia Lara and Sidney Chalhoub at the University of Campinas, and Professor Marial Iglesias at the University of Havana, is an environment in which north and south, Europe and America, generate knowledge jointly and share it with both faculty and students. Asymmetrical lines of knowledge production and dissemination are thus circumvented thanks to the project’s use of new technology, and the global south is recognized as an active and equal player. Globalized communication between faculty and students is likewise enhanced.
