Acts of Rebellion & Envisioning a New Society: A Conversation with Drs. Vincent Brown and Timothy McCarthy

Please join us for a dynamic and exciting conversation between Drs. Vincent Brown and Timothy McCarthy. During this conversation, we will discuss the role of protests and revolts in shaping Black resistance and freedom movements from slave rebellions in the 18th-century Atlantic world to the Black Lives Matter Movement today. This talk is co-sponsored by The Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History and The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

About the Speakers:

Vincent Brown is the Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He directs the History Design Studio and teaches courses in Atlantic history, African diaspora studies, and the history of slavery in the Americas. Dr. Brown’s latest book, Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War, won the Phillis Wheatley Book Award. His first book, The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery, won the James A. Rawley price, the Merle Curti Award, and the Louis Gottschalk Prize. He is also the producer of Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness, an audiovisual documentary broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens, which won the John E. O’Connor Film Award and was chosen as the best documentary for the Hollywood Black Film Festival and the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival.

Timothy Patrick McCarthy is an award-winning historian, educator, and human rights activist who has taught on Harvard's faculty since 2005. The adopted only son and grandson of public school teachers and factory workers, Dr. McCarthy currently holds a joint appointment in the Graduate School of Education and John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he is Core Faculty at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. He is also Academic Director emeritus and now Stanley Paterson Professor of American History in the Boston Clemente Course, which was a co-recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal. Dr. McCarthy is the author or editor of five books from the New Press, including Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism and the forthcoming Stonewall's Children: Living Queer History in an Age of Liberation, Loss, and Love. A frequent media commentator, he was guest editor for The Nation's historic "Reclaiming Stonewall 50" forum in June 2019. A respected leader in the LGBTQ community, he was a founding member of Barack Obama's National LGBT Leadership Council and part of the first-ever LGBTQ delegation from the United States to Palestine/Israel. Dr. McCarthy graduated with honors from Harvard College and earned his PhD from Columbia University.