Lives of the Enslaved | Teacher Seminars Online

This seminar is a study of enslaved people and the ways in which human beings coped with captivity. It also listens to their voices through audio files, diaries, letters, actions, and silences. Centering on the people of slavery rather than viewing them as objects shifts the focus to their commentary on slavery. In addition to listening to enslaved people, participants will have the opportunity to engage cutting-edge scholarship on the subject. Although the early literature objectified enslaved people and hardly paid attention to their experiences, work published since the Civil Rights Movement and into the twenty-first century offers rich accounts of enslaved life. By approaching the institution of slavery in the United States from the enslaved perspective through firsthand accounts of their experiences, students will have the opportunity to learn from a variety of sources. Some of the specific themes include gender, sexuality, region, labor, resistance, pleasure, love, family, and community among the enslaved.

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Daina Ramey Berry, Lead Scholar

Dr. Daina Ramey Berry is a professor of history and Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She came to Santa Barbara in August 2022 after serving as the Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor and chair of the Department of History and associate dean of the Graduate School at The University of Texas. She is an internationally recognized scholar of the enslaved and a specialist on gender and slavery and Black women’s history in the United States.

Berry is the award-winning author and editor of six books and numerous scholarly articles. Her most recent book, A Black Women’s History of the United States, won the 2021 Susan Koppelman Award for the Best Book in Feminist Studies, was a 2021 NAACP Finalist for Literary Non-Fiction, and received honorable mention for the 2021 Darlene Clark Hine Book Award sponsored by the Organization of American Historians. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, received the Phillis Wheatley Book Award for Scholarly Research from the Sons and Daughters of the US Middle Passage, the 2018 Best Book Prize from the Society for the History of the Early American Republic, and the 2018 Hamilton Book Prize from the University Co-op for the best book among UT Austin faculty. Berry’s book was also a finalist for the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize awarded by Yale University and the Gilder Lehrman Institute. She is completing two other contracted books, The Myths of Slavery (Beacon Press) and a biography of Anna Murray Douglass (Yale University Press).

Kory Loyola, Master Teacher

Kory LaCarrubba Loyola teaches US History I, AP US History, Debate and Public Speaking, and Social Justice, and coaches debate at High Point High School in New Jersey. She has been a teacher for twenty-three years. Kory majored in history at Rutgers University and holds a master’s degree in education from Rutgers and a master’s degree in history from Drew University. She was named the Gilder Lehrman New Jersey History Teacher of the Year in 2016 and the New Jersey Daughters of the American Revolution Outstanding Teacher of American History in 2021.