Online Roundtable: Brandon R. Byrd’s ‘The Black Republic’
Black Perspectives, the award-winning blog of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), is hosting a week-long online roundtable on Brandon R. Byrd’s The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). The roundtable begins on Monday, December 7 and concludes on Friday, December 11. It will feature pieces from Leslie M. Alexander (Arizona State University), Shaun Armstead (Rutgers University, New Brunswick), Christina C. Davidson (Washington University in St. Louis), and Chelsea Stieber (Catholic University of America). At the conclusion of the roundtable, the author Brandon R. Byrd (Vanderbilt University) will respond. On Friday at 12noon EST, Byrd will join Marlene L. Daut (University of Virginia) for a lunchtime discussion about the book (registration details will be announced on the site soon).
During the week of the online roundtable, Black Perspectives will publish new blog posts every day at 5:30AM EST. Please follow Black Perspectives (@BlkPerspectives) and AAIHS (@AAIHS) on Twitter, like AAIHS on Facebook, or subscribe to our blog for updates. By subscribing to Black Perspectives, each new post will automatically be delivered to your inbox during the week of the roundtable.
Brandon R. Byrd is a historian of nineteenth and twentieth century black intellectual and social history, with a special focus on black internationalism. His book, The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), recovers a crucial and overlooked chapter of black internationalism and political thought by exploring the ambivalent attitudes that black intellectuals in the post-Civil War era held toward Haiti. Dr. Byrd’s scholarship has appeared in journals such as The Journal of African American History, The Journal of Civil War Era, Slavery and Abolition, and The Journal of Haitian Studies, and in popular outlets, including The Washington Post. Support for his research has come from numerous institutions and organizations including Vanderbilt University, Marquette University, the American Philosophical Society, the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at UMass-Amherst, the Marcus Garvey Foundation, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. In addition to his research and teaching, Dr. Byrd is a co-editor of the Black Lives and Liberation series published by Vanderbilt University Press. Follow him on Twitter @bronaldbyrd.