Mini-Seminar with Prof. Joan Bryant
Joan Bryant, Associate Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences' African American Studies Department at Syracuse University, will lead a mini-seminar in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), 6th Floor, Bird Library, on Friday, November 14th, 2025, from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm. Bryant will discuss her book, Reluctant Race Men: Black Challenges to the Practice of Race in Nineteenth-century America, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2024 and short-listed for the MAAH-Stone Book Award. Reluctant Race Men traces a history of the disparate challenges Black American reformers lodged against the concept of race across the long nineteenth century, analyzing their opposition to reconstruct a largely ignored Black reform tradition that sheds new light on the nation's history of race. The mini-seminar will include hands-on exploration of select nineteenth-century correspondence in SCRC's Gerrit Smith Papers from reformers whose ideas appear in Reluctant Race Men. Attendees will also have the opportunity to win a copy of the book.
The mini-seminar is open to the public; however, space is limited. Registration is required by November 13. If you require an accommodation, please email Max Wagh by November 3 at mlwagh@syr.edu.
Bryant received her BA from the University of Delaware, MA in Urban Affairs and Policy Analysis from the New School for Social Research, MA in Religion from Yale Divinity School, and MA and PhD in Religious Studies--American Religious History--from Yale University. Bryant has published several book chapters on nineteenth-century Black reform movements, co-curated the SCRC exhibition Black Utopias, and curated several photography exhibitions. Current projects include an analysis of the book-making and distribution networks of mathematician and sociologist Kelly Miller and a social history of the nation’s earliest free Black communities, located in her native state of New Jersey.