LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A University of Louisville lecture April 5 will examine the 1767 epic journey of two African princes captured in slave trade and eventually returned to their homeland.
Randy Sparks, Tulane University associate history professor, will give the U of L history department’s Gottschalk lecture at 3 p.m. in Room 303, Gottschalk Hall. The talk and reception afterward are free and open to the public.
Sparks’ topic is “The Princes of Calabar: An Atlantic Odyssey from Slavery to Freedom.”
Sparks will discuss the two princes’ journey from Africa to the Caribbean, Virginia and England before their return. In discussing the men’s experiences in 18th century slave trade, Sparks will examine trading communities along the so-called Slave Coast and the movement of goods, people and ideas around the Atlantic.
The author published “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks: Evangelical Religion in Mississippi, 1773-1876.” He is developing three more works on Mississippi religious history and colonial South Carolina plantation life. Sparks formerly was co-director of the College of Charleston’s program about the Carolina “low country” area. His academic specialty is southern religious history.
The history department sponsors the Gottschalk lectures by historians who share their research specialty areas with a general audience. The department set up the series in 1987 to honor former U of L history faculty member Louis Gottschalk, an American and French revolutions scholar and the 1953 American Historical Association president.
For more information, contact Thomas Mackey at (502) 852-6817 or thomasmackey@louisville.edu.