“The Protestant Sanctioning of Slavery in the Anglo-American South: George Whitefield, The Huntingdon Connexion, and Black Bethesdans, 1739-1791”
I study histories of the Atlantic World, specifically intersections of religion, race, and place. My dissertation, “The Protestant Sanctioning of Race-Based Slavery in Language & Landscape in the Anglo-American South, 1739-1791”, considers how the mid-eighteenth century merging of Protestant beliefs with proslavery ideologies contributed to the widespread acceptance of both, and how the legacy of this pairing continues to manifest today. This project is a continuation of my master’s thesis and is anchored not only by the significant paper trail left by America’s first celebrity speaker/author/proslavery evangelical, George Whitefield, but is also informed by my years spent living and working in Savannah, Georgia, home to Whitefield’s American mission. Having recently been awarded a Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship (GRAF) by BU, in Fall 2021 I will be traveling to England for archival research.
You can find my CV here