MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES | DIRT | FALL 2020

Getting Our Hands Dirty: Manual Labor Schools, Abolition, and the Empire of Benevolence

Khalil Johnson • Wesleyan University

November 9 @ 6 P.M.
Zoom Conference: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/95004803269

The term “Benevolent Empire” describes a constellation of Protestant evangelical missionaries, educators, and social reformers who coalesced and established institutions during the early nineteenth century. While the self-styled “benevolent” reformers sprang from transatlantic networks linking New England to the United Kingdom, their empire would encompass the globe. While many involved in the Benevolent Empire hailed from universities and educational institutions that trained students for a life of the mind, the movement also begat new institutions that combined a liberal arts education with an equal emphasis on manual labor. Each became training grounds for radical abolitionism and a few practiced egalitarian ideals towards racial and gender equity. How did a profound belief in the dignity and moral value of manual labor shape these ideologies? What might we, in the present, recover from this tradition? And why did training the “head, heart, and hand” eventually become a method for labor subordination, racial segregation, and social control after emancipation?

DIRT
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