On 19-21 September 2024, the Faculty of Arts at the University of Groningen (UG) will host the Race Land symposium. This symposium is the concluding event of “Race Land: The Ecology of Segregation,” a research project conducted by NASA member Maarten Zwiers at the University of Groningen, RIAS, the University of Mississippi, and Tulane University. What are the global and environmental dimensions of Cold War Jim Crow, the system of racial segregation that existed in the US South? At the symposium we will discuss this question in panels and keynotes, with a focus on plantation afterlives. The last day of the symposium coincides with the Arts Festival, an event to inform the broader public about research being done at the UG Faculty of Arts. One of the keynote speakers is American Studies scholar Matthew Pratt Guterl, whose book American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation was an important inspiration for the Race Land project.

More information about other keynotes and panels coming soon! If you like to learn more about the Race Land project, check the website www.racelandproject.com and follow the Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/racelandproject/.