The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife (founded 1976) is pleased to announce the subject of its next annual conference, SLAVERY/ANTI-SLAVERY IN NEW ENGLAND, to be held in July 2003.

The Seminar is accepting proposals for papers and exhibits on all aspects of slavery, the slave trade, and the abolition of slavery in New England and contiguous portions of New York State and Canada, 1620 to 1900. The conference expects to focus primarily on enslaved Africans and African-Americans from the perspective of slave culture, but it will also include Native-American slavery and the biographies of other captive people. Among the topics that might be considered are early slave dealers and advertisers; connections to the southern colonies and Carribean islands; professional and domestic slavery in eighteenth-century urban areas; and plantation models in Rhode Island. The conference also encourages new work on state emancipation movements after the Revolution; the experience of free blacks; the education of former slaves; the role of black and white abolition societies; slave runaways; the abolition lecture circuits; the effect of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; the Underground Railroad and its myths; early ideas concerning reparations; everyday life after Emancipation; music; dance; and dialects. Preference will be given to proposals based on primary sources such as archaeology, slave objects, photographs, diaries, probate and genealogical records, reminiscences, biographies, school and town records, formal and informal portraits, oral histories, and newspapers.

The twenty-eighth annual topic in the Seminar series, SLAVERY/ANTI-SLAVERY IN NEW ENGLAND, will take place at Deerfield, Massachusetts, on the weekend of July 19 and 20, 2003. The program will consist of approximately seventeen lectures of twenty-five minutes each with related museum tours and demonstrations; selected papers from the conference will appear as the 2003 Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar to be issued approximately one year following the conference. The Seminar welcomes proposals from authors, academic and museum scholars, curators, teachers, collectors, and the general public.

• To request further information regarding this conference, please contact the address or email below.
• To submit a paper proposal for this conference, please send a one-page description and a one-page vita or biography by 1 March 2003. Email proposals sent as attachments are encouraged. (Please follow-up with printout).

Members receive topic, conference, and publication announcements; a copy of the current Annual Proceedings; pre-conference abstracts and bibliographies; 10 percent discount on conference fees; and 10 percent discount on all Seminar publications sold at the conference. $30.

Past seminar topics and a current list of publications for sale may be consulted at the conference website.