This past week I delivered the 2023 Stephanie M.H. Camp Memorial Lecture at the University of Washington. A full circle moment for me and an opportunity to honor a scholar whose thinking still beguiles and confounds me in the best ways. I can read Closer to Freedom over and over and still need more.
I hope you know how much we esteem you Professor Camp. And we will continue to do this work in your name.
Also working through a bit of material from the new book project on Blackness, history, and the digital which will be in Liveright/Norton’s hands by the end of the year and a bit of material from a piece I’m co-authoring with Halle Mackenzie-Ashby on reproducing racial capitalism. Grateful for Keywords for Black Louisiana which is making documents from slavery’s archive available to everyone to witness the extraordinary creativity and resistance that is Black life rejecting bondage. Black New Orleans is the Center of the World.
Slides and voice below. 'A Thing to Be Claimed and Enjoyed:' Intimacy, Excess, and Black Women's Labors in the Time of Slavery