Public Workshop: In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World

The CHR, in collaboration with the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice at Brown University, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and Iziko Museums of South Africawill be hosting in Slavery’s Wake: making Black Freedom in the World, on 27 May 2026.

The history and legacies of slavery and the concept and meanings of freedom, with their attendant questions of the forms and understandings of labour, identity, and race, and the trickery of control societies, have been central questions in the ongoing work of the Centre for Humanities Research. The work of the Global Curatorial Project, through its Unfinished Conversations series and its traveling exhibition, In Slavery’s Wake, has been staging this question in novel ways. In this workshop, we take our cue from In Slavery’s Wake in order to examine the legacies of slavery and control in the Cape, with a particular emphasis on the freedoms shaped and invented while in the hold of these systems, while creating space for freedom, for “what is most human in [humankind]” (Fanon, BSWM). Through a series of presentations and conversations, the workshop will explore questions of identity, labour, control, and the enduring legacy of slavery in the Cape, as well as the ongoing work of undoing its scripts.