Mellon Forum on the Urban Environment

Spring 2023 || Spatial Storytelling

Smallpox and Slavery in the Early Modern Atlantic World: A Digital History

with

Elise Mitchell, Princeton University Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow

and

Maria Taylor, Princeton-Mellon / Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies Fellow

This is a hybrid event. Please click below to register in advance for this Zoom webinar:

https://princeton.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_v-3Go8tFSCeCV5jmBSbMiQ

Smallpox and Slavery in the Early Modern Atlantic World: A Digital History is a digital history project consisting of a searchable database, an embedded timelapse map, and historical vignettes about enslaved people who survived smallpox outbreaks in the Atlantic World. It is based on Mitchell's qualitative research database of over 500 smallpox outbreaks that affected enslaved Africans and free people of African descent in the Atlantic World, with a focus on the Caribbean and West and West Central Africa, between the 1500s and 1830s. The goal of the project is to offer historians the opportunity to examine the histories of outbreaks and epidemics across several regions, empires, and cultural contexts over 300 years, without losing sight of the millions of people who endured the brutality of the slave trade and slavery. 

The Spring 2023 Mellon Forum on the Urban Environment is kindly sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and the Princeton University Humanities Council, Program in Latin American Studies, Center for Collaborative History, Departments of Art & Archaeology and English, HMEI, PIIRS, SPIA, and the School of Architecture.

Mellon Forum events are free and open to the public. Boxed lunches are available while supplies last.