Dr. Mustakeem (Washington University) will speak about and from her 2016 two-time award-winning book, Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage.
Sowande Mustakeem
Sowande Mustakeem’s groundbreaking study goes inside the Atlantic slave trade to explore the social conditions and human costs embedded in the world of maritime slavery. She has published a multitude of articles related to her interests in race, gender, slavery, violence, illness, women, murder, and public memory over the past two decades. Her most recent contribution appeared in the online publication Vox, 6 Myths About the History of Black People in America. She has been featured on BBC radio and was likewise on Henry Louis Gates's PBS documentary series Many Rivers to Cross. Additionally, in the spring of 2017, she became the first African American ever tenured through the tenure track process in the History and African American Studies departments at Washington University. Currently, she is working on her next book, Blood On The Concrete, which moves from the water and explores the detonation of power and violence on land through female hands. Dr. Mustakeem's book, Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage, published through the University of Illinois Press, won the 2017 Wesley Logan prize for the best book for the history of the African Diaspora jointly awarded by the American Historical Association and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. She is the recipient of the 2020 Dred Scott Freedom Award for Historical Literacy Excellence from the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation.