Barbara Fields to Deliver ISI Lecture

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) is delighted to host Professor Barbara Fields, who will visit UMass from February 18-20 for the ISI 2014 Residency. Professor Fields will present a public lecture entitled “Was Emancipation a War Crime?” on Wednesday, February 19th in Campus Center 165-169 at 5 p.m. In addition, through the course of her stay she will visit classes in an array of departments and take part in several graduate seminars, as well as engage with this year’s ISI fellows, who are discussing the theme of “Emancipation” through the year. 

A leading scholar in American history, Professor Fields specializes in southern history and 19th-century social history. Her many books include Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century (1985) as well as the co-authored volumes The Destruction of Slavery (1985), Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War (1992), and Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (1992). Her most recent book, co-authored with Karen Fields, is Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life (2012). Called urgent, compelling, demanding and impressive, Racecraft locates the failure of achieving a post-racial America in the limited and inadequate vocabulary, language, and concepts presently used to discuss race and inequality.

Professor Fields is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including a 1992 MacArthur Fellowship, the John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association, the Founders Prize of the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, and the Thomas Jefferson Prize for the Society of the History of the Federal Government. Professor Fields is Professor of History at Columbia University. 

For a complete schedule of events, see our Residency page.