Master Class Series: "Almost Dead"

Author Dr. Michael Dickinson gives a talk on his new book Almost Dead. Where he will describe how urban environments provided unique barriers to and avenues for social rebirth: the process by which African-descended peoples reconstructed their lives individually and collectively after forced exportation from West Africa.

Dr. Dickinson explains that it was in these urban slave's communities; within the connections between neighbors and kinfolk; that the enslaved found the physical and psychological resources necessary to endure the seemingly unendurable. Whether sites of first arrival, commodification, sale, short-term captivity, or lifetime enslavement, the urban Atlantic shaped and was shaped by Black lives.

What are Master Classes?

The Rutgers University-Camden Division of Diversity, Inclusion, and Civic Engagement (DICE) Master Class series is a social and cultural capacity building education initiative led by renowned experts in the subject of diversity, equity, and inclusion.