2005 Schedule

Repairing the Past: Confronting the Legacies of Slavery, Genocide, and Caste

Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
7th Annual International Conference
October 27, 28, and 29, 2005
Levinson Auditorium, Yale Law School
127 Wall Street, New Haven, Connecticut

Schedule of Events

Thursday, October 27

6:30 - 7:30 p.m.     Conference Registration

7:30 - 7:45 p.m.     Welcome Remarks

David W. Blight, Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University

7:45 - 8:30 p.m.     Keynote Address

Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania, and former chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, The Continuing Significance of Reparations: Callie House and the Ex-Slave Pension Movement(Paper Unavailable)

8:30 - 9:15 p.m.     Reception and Book Signing

Friday, October 28

8:00 - 8:30 a.m.     Continental Breakfast and Registration

8:30 - 10:30 a.m.     Slavery, Exploitation, and the Philosophy of Reparations

Pablo de Greiff, Director of Research, International Center for Transitional Justice, Addressing the Past: Reparations for Gross Human Rights Abuses

Thomas McCarthy, Professor of Philosophy and John Shaffer Professor in the Humanities, Northwestern University, Remarks on the Morality and Politics of Reparations for Slavery

Janna Thompson, Associate Professor and Head of the Australian Research Council Special Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne, Memory and the Ethics of Reparation

Comment: Robert Gooding-Williams, Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern University

10:30 - 10:45 a.m.     Coffee Break

10:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.     Law, Memory, and the Politics of Reconciliation, Atonement, and Apology

Roy L. Brooks, Warren Distinguished Professor of Law and University Professor, University of San Diego, Institutional Atonement for Slavery: Colleges and Corporations

Brian Weiner, Associate Professor of Politics, University of San Francisco, National Apologies: Extraordinary Politics within Ordinary Times

Comment: Gerald Jaynes, Director of Graduate Studies in African American Studies and Professor of African American Studies and Economics, Yale University

12:30 - 1:30 p.m.     Lunch

1:30 - 4:00 p.m.     American Slavery and the History of Reparations

Martha Biondi, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History, Northwestern University, Preliminary Comments on Black Intellectuals and Reparation in the Black Power Era

Adrienne Davis, Reef C. Ivey II Professor of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law, Through the Tort Lens Darkly: Slavery, Reparations, and Conceptions of Justice(Paper Unavailable)

John David Smith, Charles H. Stone Distinguished Professor of American History, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Reading the Language of Reparations and the Meaning of Emancipation, 1865-1917 (Abstract)

Comment: Deborah White, Distinguished Professor of History, Rutgers University

Saturday, October 29

8:00 - 8:30 a.m.     Continental Breakfast and Registration

8:30 - 10-15 a.m.     Germany, Holocaust Memory, and the Idea of Historical Justice

Omer Bartov, John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History, Brown University, Guilt and Accountability in the Postwar Courtroom: The Holocaust in Czortkow and Buczacz, East Galicia, As Seen in West German Legal Discourse

Jeffrey Herf, Professor of History, University of Maryland at College Park, Why Any Memory and Justice, Rather than None at All? Comparative Reflections on West Germany after the Holocaust and the United States after the Civil War

Comment: Dagmar Herzog, Professor of History, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

10:15 - 10:30 a.m.     Coffee Break

10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.     Latin America, Slavery, Exploitation and Historical Justice

Guillaume Boccara, Researcher, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, Repairing or Sharing the Past? Historical Truth, Memory of Fear, and Collective Rights in Post-Dictatorship Chile(Paper Unavailable)

Hebe Maria Mattos, Professor of History, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil, “Remanescentes de Quilombo”: Memory of Slavery, Historical Justice, and Citizenship in Contemporary Brazil

Stephen Pitti, Professor of History, Yale University, Bracero Justice: The Legacies of Mexican Contract Labor

Comment: Stuart Schwartz, George Burton Adams Professor of History, Yale University

12:30 - 1:30 p.m.     Lunch

1:30 - 3:30 p.m.     Caste and Historical Justice in Comparison: India, South Africa, and the United States

Uday Mehta, Clarence Francis Professor in the Social Sciences, Amherst College, History and the Social Problem: The Case of India

Graeme Simpson, Program Director, International Center for Transitional Justice, Race Against Time: The Politics of Memory in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Process

Linda Faye Williams, Professor of Government and Politics, University of Maryland at College Park, The Constraint of Race: Slavery, the Legacy of the “White Citizen,” and American Social Policy

Comment: James T. Campbell, Associate Professor of American Civilization, Africana Studies, and History, Brown University

3:45 - 5:30 p.m.     Concluding Roundtable

Ben Kiernan, Whitney Griswold Professor of History, Professor of International and Area Studies, and Director, Genocide Studies Program, Yale University

Donald Shriver, Jr., President of the Faculty and William E. Dodge Professor of Applied Christianity, Emeritus, Union Theological Seminary, New York