What does the theme "Conflict & Cooperation" mean to you?
What interests me about this theme is the invitation to ask how conflict and cooperation relate to one another, rather than assuming that these terms are oppositional or mutually reinforcing. Social scientists have examined these dynamics in studies of international relations, geopolitics, resource management, and post-conflict societies. As a historian, I'm interested in what happens when we bring such concepts to the study of the past and, specifically, to the history of Black life in the United States. From that perspective, cooperation is not necessarily evidence that conflict has ended. People may cooperate within unequal systems, negotiate within institutions they cannot escape, and form alliances as strategies of survival.
For me, “Conflict & Cooperation” offers a framework for considering who is able to declare a conflict over, whose experience of violence or instability continues afterward, and what forms of cooperation emerge under those conditions. These questions are especially productive for histories of slavery and emancipation.
How does this theme play a role in your work?
The theme speaks directly to my work on the Black experience in the United States. I study periods often organized around the beginnings and endings of revolutions and wars. But such turning points did not necessarily correspond to clear transitions in Black life.
The early United States is revealing. The nation emerged from the American Revolution in 1783 and later confronted the Civil War and emancipation in the 1860s. The decades between are often characterized by national development and relative political stability. Yet enslaved and free Black people experienced forced labor, displacement, family separation, racial violence, and continuing struggles over the meaning of freedom.
From the vantage point of Black history, "post-conflict" then is a complicated category. This leads me to ask: What does a post-conflict society look like for people whose vulnerability persists beyond the formal end of conflict? In my work, that question draws attention to how Black children and families navigated emancipation and confronted seemingly enduring forms of coercion and institutional control.
What project(s) will you be working on during your fellowship at the Forum Basiliense?
During the fellowship, I will work on several journal articles looking at Black childhood, labor, emancipation, and survival in the nineteenth-century United States. I'm focusing on the exploitation of poor and indentured Black children after the American Revolution, as well as how children, families, and communities sought to secure protection and greater control over their lives.
I'm particularly interested in what these histories reveal about the persistence of coercive labor after emancipation and what the experiences of Black children can tell us about the limits of the category "post-conflict."
I see the residency as a fantastic opportunity to engage scholars outside my field. Conversations across disciplines, regions, and historical contexts will help me refine how I think about conflict, dependency, care, and freedom.