GLC@Lunch with Nicola Denzey Lewis and Brishette Mendoza: “Freedpeople and Mortuary Industries in Imperial Rome and the Postbellum American South”

In this GLC @ Lunch conversation, Nicola Denzey Lewis and Brishette Mendoza provide an overview of ancient Roman funerary monuments of formerly enslaved people in the 1st and 2nd centuries, putting them into productive dialogue with archival material related to funerary items of formerly enslaved people in the postbellum American South. The archival material includes records contained in Civil War U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) Widow’s Pension files housed at the National Archives. Focusing, in particular, on formerly enslaved women, Denzey Lewis and Mendoza discuss what can be learned from placing the two different cultural systems side by side, and what the limits may be of this historical comparison.