Gumbo, Maize, and Peaches: Slavery and Conquest in American Foodways

Food highlights a living paradox: it represents the key ingredient that binds us together, yet divides us when power dynamics and privilege are at play. By shedding light on these intricate realities, the Food for Thought Lecture Series seeks to problematize and critically assess the complex social, cultural, environmental, and political relationships that we have with food. Join the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities on March 27 for a conversation with Kelly Brignac, assistant professor of Atlantic history at Colby, and Danae Jacobson, assistant professor of U.S. history at Colby, on slavery and conquest in American foodways.

Kelly Brignac, originally from New Orleans, is an Assistant Professor of Atlantic History at Colby College. She received her Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 2021. With the support of a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship, Kelly is currently revising her book manuscript, Defining Slavery in the Age of Abolition: The Forced Indenture of Africans in the French Empire. It investigates the forced indenture of Africans in the French empire after the abolition of trans-Atlantic slaving and slavery. Brignac’s most recent article, “The Forced Indenture of Africans in Senegal and Ste. Marie, Madagascar, 1817-1830,” can be found in Slavery and Abolition (volume 43, no. 4, 2022).

Danae Jacobson is an Assistant Professor of U.S. History at Colby College. She received her Ph.D. in Environmental History from the University of Notre Dame in 2019. Jacobson is currently revising her book manuscript, Habits of Conquest: Nuns and the U.S. Settler Empire, which brings together the Environment, Gender, Religion, and Settler Colonialism. Jacobson’s most recent article, “Reproducing Celibacy: Nuns’ Households in Nineteenth-Century New Mexico Territory,” is in the Western Historical Quarterly (Vol 53, Winter 2022), and she was a 2021-2022 New-York Historical Society Public Fellow in Religion & the American West.