UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 20, Page 4
February 15, 1996
Slavery program in Lewes, Seaford

     The 11th annual University by the Land & Sea lecture series will
conclude in Lewes and Georgetown on Monday, Feb. 19, with
"Reinterpreting American Slavery," a presentation by Peter Kolchin, UD
Henry Clay Reed Professor of History.
     Kolchin will discuss some of the main issues and controversies
that have surfaced in recent interpretations of slavery.
     His free public lecture will be presented at 10 a.m. in 104
Cannon Laboratory on the Hugh R. Sharp Campus in Lewes and again at 2
p.m. in the auditorium of the Methodist Manor House in Seaford.
     Unlike traditional and more recent revisionist works, Kolchin
seeks to provide a balanced account that pays equal attention to the
slaves, the masters and the system that bound them together. His talk
uses his recent book, American Slavery 1619-1877, as a vehicle for
addressing changing historical understanding of slavery in the
southern United States.
     American Slavery won the award for the outstanding book on the
subject of human rights in North America, awarded by the Gustavus
Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America in 1994.
A previous book, Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom,
won the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American
Historians, the Bancroft Prize in American History from Columbia
University and the Charles S. Sydnor Award from the Southern
Historical Association.
     He holds a bachelor's degree from Columbia University and a
doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. Before joining the UD in
1985, he taught at Harvard University and the universities of New
Mexico, Wisconsin and California-Davis.
     For more information, contact the Office of Alumni and University
Relations at 855-1620 in Georgetown or 735-8200 in Dover.