Lunchtime Book Talk with Author Brandon R. Byrd
Friday, December 11, 2020
Black Perspectives, the award-winning blog of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), invites readers to attend a lunchtime book talk with Brandon R. Byrd on his book, The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). Byrd’s work explores the ambivalent attitudes that African American leaders in the post-Civil War era held toward Haiti, the first and only black republic in the Western Hemisphere. Following emancipation, African American leaders of all kinds—politicians, journalists, ministers, writers, educators, artists, and diplomats—identified new and urgent connections with Haiti, a nation long understood as an example of black self-determination. They celebrated not only its diplomatic recognition by the United States but also the renewed relevance of the Haitian Revolution. Spanning the Reconstruction, post-Reconstruction, and Jim Crow eras, The Black Republic recovers a crucial and overlooked chapter of African American internationalism and political thought.
Byrd will be in conversation with fellow historian Marlene L. Daut. We encourage attendees to secure a copy of the book and read the pieces in our week-long roundtable on the book. AAIHS members should take advantage of the exclusive members’ discount on books purchased from Penn Press.
Date: Friday, December 11, 2020
Time: 12noon EST
Registration: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/Lunchtime-Talk-w-Brandon-Bryd/register
*Registration is free and open to all.
About the Author
Brandon R. Byrd is a historian of nineteenth and twentieth century black intellectual and social history, with a special focus on black internationalism. His book, The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), recovers a crucial and overlooked chapter of black internationalism and political thought by exploring the ambivalent attitudes that black intellectuals in the post-Civil War era held toward Haiti. Dr. Byrd’s scholarship has appeared in journals such as The Journal of African American History, The Journal of Civil War Era, Slavery and Abolition, and The Journal of Haitian Studies, and in popular outlets, including The Washington Post. Support for his research has come from numerous institutions and organizations including Vanderbilt University, Marquette University, the American Philosophical Society, the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at UMass-Amherst, the Marcus Garvey Foundation, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. In addition to his research and teaching, Dr. Byrd is a co-editor of the Black Lives and Liberation series published by Vanderbilt University Press. Follow him on Twitter @bronaldbyrd.
About the Moderator
Marlene L. Daut is Professor of African Diaspora and American Studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World and Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism. A collection she co-edited, Haitian Revolutionary Fictions: An Anthology, will be published by the University of Virginia Press in 2021. She is currently working on two additional books. The first of these, Awakening the Ashes, is an intellectual history to be published by the University of North Carolina Press. The second, tentatively titled, The First and Last King of Haiti, is under contract with Knopf/Pantheon Books. Follow her on Twitter @FictionsofHaiti.
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