The Slave’s Cause: A New History of the Abolition Movement

Join us at CMCH to hear distinguished scholar Manisha Sinha discuss her book, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition, Winner of the 2017 Frederick Douglass Prize. 

Abolitionists are often portrayed as middle class, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Sinha overturns this image, recasting abolition as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved found common ground in causes ranging from feminism to anti-imperialism. This new history sets the abolition movement in a transnational context and illustrates how the abolitionist vision ultimately linked the slave’s cause to the struggle to redefine democracy and human rights across the globe.

This event is free and open to the public, but please RSVP at [email protected] or by calling 860-236-5621 ext. 238.

Questions? Call Adult Programs Manager Natalie Belanger at 860-236-5621 et. 289 or email [email protected].

About the Speaker

Manisha Sinha is professor and the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She received her Ph.D from Columbia University. Her recent book The Slave’s Cause won the 2017 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, jointly sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at the MacMillan Center at Yale University. The book was featured as the Editor’s Choice of the New York Times Book Review. It was named the book of the week by Times Higher Education in May, 2016 to coincide with its UK publication and one of three Great History Books for 2016 in Bloomberg News. In 2017, Sinha was named one of Top Twenty Five Women in Higher Education by the magazine Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.

Sinha’s research interests lie in United States history, especially the transnational histories of slavery and abolition and the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. She has written for The New York Times, The New York Daily News, Time Magazine, CNN, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post and been interviewed by The Times of London, The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, The Boston Globe, Slate, The Daily Caller, and Gothamist. She appeared on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show in 2014. She was an adviser and on-screen expert for the Emmy nominated PBS documentary, The Abolitionists (2013).