Early Abolition’s Appeal: Paths Taken, Paths Untrod
Cameron Seglias (Goethe University Frankfurt)
19 November, 4.30 pm in G.H01, Arts Complex, Woodland Road
When we think about the struggle to abolish racialized slavery, many of us probably think of a few key figures. In the United Kingdom, these might include Olaudah Equiano, Granville Sharp, and Thomas Clarkson. Hopefully, we think about the countless enslaved and formerly enslaved people whose very lives stand as testaments to their courage and irrevocable desire for freedom, dignity, and justice. We are likely less accustomed though to ask ourselves about what motivations white abolitionists had for opposing racialized slavery. Isn’t it obvious? Enslavement is bad. And yet, most Europeans—on either side of the Atlantic—didn’t necessarily think so. This talk will uncover some of those motivations and look at the ways in which they were entangled with the economic, political, and religious crises that shook the early modern English Atlantic. In so doing, we will seek to understand early abolition’s appeal in multiple senses of the word: What case did early opponents of racialized slavery make to their contemporaries? What can we still learn from them today and how might they shed light on our own struggles for economic, political, and social justice? Perhaps more darkly, what warnings must we heed? Ultimately, this talk is about how the story of early abolition offers valuable lessons even while it continues to suggest paths not (yet) taken—ones that might just lead to a better, more equitable future.
Cameron Seglias is Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies. He completed his PhD in 2022 at the Freie Universität Berlin and holds an MA from the Freie Universität Berlin and a BA from Bard College. His first monograph, Settling Debt: Antislavery and Colonial Crisis, is forthcoming from Cornell University Press in May 2026. Research for this project was supported by fellowships from the German Research Foundation, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Dr. Seglias’s current book project, tentatively entitled Fluid: Sex, Secularism, and the Literary Imagination, looks at secularization, the history of sexuality, and literature from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century.