The Many Legacies of Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Image
Library and Archives Canada / C-029977
-

Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823–1893) was a trailblazing Black feminist, abolitionist, educator, activist, newspaper editor, and lawyer. Her many achievements include becoming the first Black woman to edit a newspaper in North America  when she founded the anti-slavery newspaper, The Provincial Freeman in 1853.

During this virtual program, historians Nneka D. Dennie and Kristin Moriah, both of whom have recently published books about Shadd Cary, discuss new insights into her life, work, and enduring legacy.  The conversation will be moderated by AAS member and councilor Derrick Spires.

Portrait of Mary Ann Shadd Cary. Courtesy, Library and Archives Canada / C-029977

 

 

 

Presenter

Nneka D. Dennie is a Black feminist scholar with specializations in nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American History. Her research examines Black intellectual thought with an emphasis on nineteenth-century African American women. She is assistant professor of history at Washington and Lee University. Dennie also co-founded the Black Women’s Studies Association. 

Her first book, Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth-Century Black Radical Feminist, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. Her monograph, Redefining Radicalism: Black Women Intellectuals in the Nineteenth Century, is a study of early Black radical thought. In 2024, Dennie was one of ten recipients nationwide of the Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders Award from the Institute of Citizens and Scholars. Her work has been supported by the Center for Black Digital Research at Pennsylvania State University, as well as a Consortium for Faculty Diversity postdoctoral fellowship at Davidson College and the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Diversity Predoctoral Fellowship. Dennie’s work has been published in Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International; Feminist Studies; Atlantic Studies: Global Currents; Slate; and more.

Presenter

Kristin Moriah is an assistant professor of English at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She is is the editor of Insensible of Boundaries: Studies in Mary Ann Shadd Cary (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), the first volume of scholarly essays about Mary Ann Shadd Cary. In 2022 she was a visiting fellow at the Pennsylvania State University Center for Black Digital Research and the Pennsylvania State Humanities Institute. She is the most recent recipient of the American Studies Association’s Yasuo Sakakibara prize and one of the inaugural recipients of the Queen’s University Black Scholars Excellence in Mentorship awards. Her writing can be found in American Quarterly, C Magazine, and PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches théâtrales au Canada and Canadian Theatre Review

Presenter

Derrick R. Spires is a John and Patricia Cochran Scholar of Inclusive Excellence and Associate Professor of English at the University of Delaware, where he specializes in early Black print culture, citizenship studies, and African American intellectual history. His first book, The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), won the Modern Language Association Prize for First Book and the St. Louis Mercantile Library Prize. He is curator of "Black Print African American Writing, 1773-1910," on display at Cornell University's Kroch Library through July 2025.  Spires was a Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellow at AAS in 2008-9 and was elected to AAS membership in October 2020.  He serves on the Society's Council.