Patricia Samford Set To Lecture At Muhlenberg College
Historical archaeologist, Dr. Patricia Samford, will present her lecture, “Creating Identities in the Diaspora: An Archaeological Perspective” on February 27 at 7 p.m. in the Miller Forum in Moyer Hall.Tuesday, February 14, 2006 01:59 PM
Samford appears as part of the College’s series, The Ethics and Politics of Identity.. This event is free and open to the public.
Focusing primarily on colonial Virginia and other parts of the Atlantic South, this lecture examines how slaves’ concepts of ethnicity, gender, and race intersected to create individual and collective identities. Weaving together archaeological, documentary, and ethnohistoric evidence from the American South and West Africa, Dr. Samford examines African-American identity as expressed in foodways, material culture, and spiritual and healing practices.
Samford is a Historical Archaeologist who has published widely on issues of race and identity in the context of antebellum slave plantations in the southern United States. Her careful excavations and analyses of slave quarters at various plantation sites have revealed strong continuities with West African ritual traditions that suggest both maintenance of cultural identities and resistance to slave-owner ideologies. Most recently, Samford has contributed two chapters regarding the West African roots of plantation medicinal practices to a forthcoming book entitled Maladies and Remedies: The Impact of Plantation Life on the Health of Enslaved Blacks. Samford has also contributed to making archaeology relevant and accessible to the public through her role in managing North Carolina’s state historic sites and her publication of archaeology texts for use at the elementary educational level.
The Ethics and Politics of Identity is a year long series of programs, sponsored by the Muhlenberg College Center for Ethics , about the ethical challenges that surround the changing categories of social, national, and global identities.
For more information on the series, or to view the schedule of events, please visit: www.muhlenberg.edu/cultural/ethics.
