“Keywords for Black Louisiana: Digital Histories of the Gulf Coast”

American Historical Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA.

Chair: Jessica Marie Johnson, Johns Hopkins University

Moderator: Christina Thomas, Johns Hopkins University

This lightning round session will bring together innovative young scholars using digital tools, theories, and methods to create portals into the history of Black people in Louisiana.

Papers:

Telling the Story of Marronage in Louisiana
Halle-Mackenzie Ashby, Johns Hopkins University

John Blassingame's Historical Networks
Olivia Barnard, Johns Hopkins University

Charity Hospital and Black Space in New Orleans
Maya Overby Koretzky, Johns Hopkins University

Blassingame’s Visual Archive as a History of Louisiana
Robin Bo Eun McDowell, Harvard University

Keywords and Editing Louisiana Colonial Documents
Elena Palazzolo, Johns Hopkins University

Tracking the Untrackable: Using Digital Tools to Study Maroons’ Flight to Freedom
Gregory Smaldone, Johns Hopkins University

Mapping Histories of Marronage
Nicole Ellen Viglini, University of California, Berkeley

Domestic Slave Trade to Louisiana: The Inward Manifest Database
Jennie K. Williams, Johns Hopkins University

Session Abstract

Doing digital history and making history accessible to the public has never been more important. This is especially true for the study, dissemination and teaching of African American, African diasporic, and African histories of the United States. This session, in lightning round format (5-7 minutes each) will bring together innovative young scholars using digital tools, theories, and methods to create portals into the history of Black people in Louisiana. Ranging from studies using the Louisiana Colonial Documents Digitization Project to working with corpus of runaway slave ads to explore the research praxis of John Blassingame and other Black historians of Gulf Coast Louisiana life and culture, this highly visual panel will share insights gained and pitfalls surmounted when studying the complex, multi-empire, centuries long history of the diasporic and archipelagic people of African descent of the Gulf Coast. Digital humanists, K-12 teachers, artists, activists and cultural practitioners welcome for a robust conversation about what and how to do public, digital histories of black life in the region.