Athenaeum Symposia Speaker Series
Our distinguished speakers offer timely, stimulating topics delivered by today's leading experts in international affairs, social science, the humanities, arts, politics, and economics. These events encourage meaningful conversation, critical thinking, and intercultural understanding around our collective experiences.
This year’s speakers will explore the theme of Social Justice: Community Wellness. Our goal is to inspire respectful exchange of ideas among the Montgomery College community and the larger Montgomery County community, advancing the kinds of meaningful conversations that are ever-more important.
Dan Sayers, Associate Professor Department of Anthropology, American University, Washington D.C.
Monday, November 11, 2024 | 6:30-8:00 p.m., Germantown Campus, HS Building, Globe Hall
Dan Sayers has been an anthropological archaeologist for over 30 years. In all that time, he has generated critiques of our capitalist world while working toward a variety of social liberations through his research. These areas of critique and analysis are represented in his two books, A Desolate Place for a Defiant People: The Archaeology of Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and Enslaved Laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp (2014), and The Archaeology of the Homed and the Unhomed (2023), and his many articles in academic journals and edited volumes.
Did you know that before the Civil War, there was an entire social world and society thriving in the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina? And did you know that the major agents in that society’s creation were Africans, African Americans and Indigenous Americans? Today, the largest portion of the Great Dismal Swamp stands is a federally owned National Wildlife Refuge. Most of us don’t tend to think of archaeology when we think of “emancipation” and go-to sources of insight and inspiration for positive change in our contemporary moment. But it has taken on-the-ground archaeological research in the Dismal Swamp Refuge to truly begin to understand that radical and complex social world which those Diasporans created, starting in the early 1600s and persisting all the way through 1863’s Emancipation Proclamation. In this presentation, Dr. Sayers will discuss multiple dimensions of that Diasporic world through the historical archaeological project that he developed in the early 2000s, the Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study (GDLSL). Over the years, the GDSLS has involved an interdisciplinary team of researchers, students, museums, several government agencies, and the public. As we will see, we cannot think of the pre-Civil War Great Dismal Swamp without thinking deeply about self-emancipators of the past and how they can speak to us today about our collective tomorrows.
Light refreshments will be served.
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These events fulfill the Multicultural Diversity Training requirement for MC employees.
To reserve space for classes or to request accommodations for an event, email or call 240-567-1845.
