Keynote Lecture 2 - Annual Conference | Amrita Chakrabarti Myers (Indiana University, Bloomington) “Dangerous Characters”: Black Women, Constructions of Freedom, and White Violence in the Post-Civil War South
Join us at our 2026 Annual Conference on 17-19 June.
The second keynote lecture will take place on 18 June at 17:00 in Room 319 at IOS (Landshuter Str. 4). It will be given by Prof. Dr. Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, Ruth N. Halls Professor at the Departments of History and Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, and current visiting professor at the Regensburg European-American Forum (REAF).
We are delighted to welcome Prof. Dr. Amrita Chakrabarti Myers of Indiana University, Bloomington, and current REAF visiting professor, to give a keynote lecture at our annual conference on “Dangerous Characters”: Black Women, Constructions of Freedom, and White Violence in the Post-Civil War South.
Bio | Amrita Chakrabarti Myers is the Ruth N. Halls Professor of History and Gender Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, where she is also affiliated with African American and African Diaspora Studies and American Studies. An award-winning historian, writer, educator, and public intellectual, her work examines the intersections of race, gender, power, freedom, and citizenship in the lives of Black women in the United States, particularly in the nineteenth-century South.
Professor Myers is the author of the acclaimed book Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston, which received multiple national awards for its groundbreaking analysis of how free and enslaved Black women navigated and challenged systems of oppression in the antebellum South. Her most recent book, The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn, recovers the life of Julia Chinn, an enslaved Black woman whose long-term relationship with U.S. Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson illuminates the complex entanglements of race, slavery, gender, and power in American history.
Beyond her scholarship, Professor Myers is deeply engaged in public history, social justice advocacy, and community-based work. Through her teaching, writing, public speaking, and diversity and equity initiatives, she seeks to connect historical inquiry with contemporary conversations about systemic racism, inequality, and social change. Her work demonstrates how recovering marginalized voices from the past can reshape our understanding of American history and its continuing impact on the present.
The Leibniz ScienceCampus 2026 Annual Conference is supported by the Hans Vielberth Regensburg University Foundation. The conference takes place in cooperation with REAF.