Howard University history professor Ana Lucia Araujo has been selected to present at this year’s Ida Wise East Memorial Lecture.
Araujo’s lecture will cover “Slavery at Mount Vernon and Monticello: Black and White Battles of Memory and Public History,” and will be held virtually at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 22.
Based on Araujo’s recent book, “Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past,” the lecture will explore how history and the memory of slavery have been concealed and exposed over the last three decades at Mount Vernon and Monticello, the homes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, respectively.
“She is an important scholar of slavery and public memory in the Americas and has a unique interdisciplinary — history, art history, anthropology, and fine arts — background. Her broad grounding in the liberal arts made her a good fit for the lecture,” said Dr. Nichole Sanders, the John Franklin East Humanities Professor at Lynchburg, who selected Araujo for the lecture.
Sanders added she hopes attendees will reflect on the role historical memory plays in current debates about commemoration.
“The humanities are key in helping us understand the past, as well as the way the past is written about, memorialized, and fought over,” Sanders said.
The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required by filling out this form. The event link will be sent after registering. Attendees with a University of Lynchburg email address are not required to register and will receive the event link via email.
For more information, contact Sanders at sanders.n@lynchburg.edu.
The Ida Wise East Lecture series was established in 1979 by an endowment gift from Margaret East Nelson of Norfolk, Virginia, in memory of her mother, Ida Wise East, and in recognition of the lifelong interest of the East and Nelson families in the humanities.
