Freedom on the Move Symposium

Freedom on the Move (FOTM) will hold a symposium at Cornell University on March 15-16, 2024 to gather scholars (including early career and graduate students), librarians, archivists, and teachers to discuss the future of fugitivity studies and the impact of FOTM in scholarship, pedagogy, and the digital humanities. We invite scholars to propose papers that are based on Freedom on the Move or related topics of fugitivity. Accepted papers will be pre-circulated among confirmed conference attendees. The resulting in-person discussion will, we hope, advance our collective understanding of self-liberation, racialized surveillance and policing, and marronage and fugitivity, while also helping to build a larger research community.

What is Freedom on the Move? With the advent of newspapers in the American colonies, enslavers published advertisements to try to capture freedom-seekers. Jailers posted additional ads describing people they had apprehended. While created to control the movement of enslaved people, the advertisements ultimately preserved the details of individual lives - their personality, appearance, and life story. Freedom on the Move is a database that houses these advertisements. FOTM serves as a research aid, a pedagogical tool, a resource for genealogists, and a starting point for all those who want to use these historical documents in new and creative ways.

Interested parties should submit a CV and one-page proposal or abstract (no more than 250 words) to FOTM@cornell.edu by November 20, 2024. Project descriptions should include a brief overview of the argument, sources, the significance of the project, and the current status of the paper (yet to be written, in progress, drafted, completed). Final papers should be between 20-30 pages double-spaced and must be submitted to FOTM@cornell.edu by February 29, 2024 to allow time for circulation to registered attendees and fellow panelists. Contributors will be notified of acceptance by December 8, 2023. An honorarium will be provided for accepted papers, and some travel assistance will be available with priority allocated to graduate students and early career scholars who are presenting papers.

All questions and submissions should be sent to FOTM @cornell.edu.

For more information about Freedom on the Move, please visit https://freedomonthemove.org/.