'Redemption Rising: Heritage-Making and Forced Prison Labor in the American South'
Dr. Camille Westmont (Postdoctoral Fellow, McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge)
Thursday 1st February, 2024
- This is a hybrid event, held at the Seminar Room, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Downing Site and on Zoom
- To join online register here.
The use of forced prison labor in the United States increased exponentially in the decade following the end of the US Civil War; unsurprisingly, African Americans were disproportionately targeted for prosecution, incarceration, and sale to private businesses under the Southern convict lease system. Although the Southern convict lease system has been the repeated subject of historical investigations, the phenomenon has only recently entered archaeological consciousness. Recently discovered sites have led to increased public interest and engagement. In this talk, I consider the complicated path forward for a heritage of forced prison labor and what such a heritage means for the stories we tell ourselves about who we are as a society.
Camille Westmont is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre at the University of Cambridge. She holds a PhD in Anthropology with a specialization in Historical Archaeology and a Masters in Historic Preservation from the University of Maryland. She has previously been affiliated with the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies at the University of Gothenburg and the Center for Southern Studies at Sewanee: The University of the South. Throughout her career, her work has consistently focused on post-industrial communities, including the role of heritage in mediating post-industrial communities’ current social issues.