Two Brains: Restoring Histories: Plantation Lives in the American South

One Topic + Two Brains = Great Conversation

In this series, we explore one topic with two experts who bring different perspectives. Mini-lectures fuel lively group conversations and expand our understanding of complex ideas.

About the program:

How do we address “hard history,” or narratives that have been deliberately erased and replaced? Through research on U.S. plantations, we’ll explore how erasure becomes part of the restructured story and discuss the challenges and rewards of restoring truths about the past.

Keep the discussion going after the event at an informal gathering across the street at Glasshalfull restaurant.

Your speakers:

Anna Agbe-Davies

Associate Professor of Anthropology

More about Professor Agbe-Davies

Anna S. Agbe-Davies is an historical archaeologist with research interests in the plantation societies of the colonial southeastern US and Caribbean, as well as towns and cities of the 19th and 20th century Midwest, with a particular focus on the African diaspora.

For more details on Professor Agbe-Davies’s research, see the link to her website: agbedavies.web.unc.edu.

Tanya Shields

Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies

More about Professor Shields

Tanya Shields’s research focuses on Caribbean studies and plantation logics. She teaches classes on the Caribbean, the arts of activism, growing up girls globally, and the continuing influence of plantation economics and politics.

She is currently at work on her second monograph, Gendered Labor: Race, Place and Power on Female-Owned Plantations, a comparative study of women who owned plantations in the Caribbean and U.S. South.

Tuition is free for UNC students, faculty, and staff. If you are a currently enrolled or employed by UNC-CH, email human@unc.edu to reserve your ticket or show your OneCard at the door. Walk-in entry will be available as space allows.