Lecture: "Black in Blue: Excavating the Lives of Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Davis, TX, 1869-1875"

In early April, the Anthropology Department will welcome Professor Laurie Wilkie, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences at University of California-Berkeley. She is an anthropological archaeologist whose research explores 19th- and 20th-century lifeways in the United States and Caribbean, combining documentary and material sources of evidence to understand the recent past. Her work focuses on two principal themes: how expressions of social difference - gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sex, socioeconomics and politics - can be understood through the materiality of everyday life; and how a sense of material heritage shaped human life in the recent past, and continues to do so today.

Please join us for Professor Wilkie's hybrid lecture "Black in Blue: Excavating the Lives of Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Davis, TX, 1869-1875" on 4 April, 2022 at 5 pm in 278 Corbett Family Hall or on zoom (link: https://notredame.zoom.us/s/98947571971) to learn about the results of her most recent research project, detailed in her recently published book Unburied Lives: The Historical Archaeology of Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Davis, Texas, 1869–1875 (https://unmpress.com/books/unburied-lives/9780826362995). Wilkie employs a Black Feminist approach to investigate Buffalo Soldiers’ lives at 19th-century Fort Davis. She places the everyday items recovered in excavations into conversation with the fort architecture, surrounding landscape, military practices, and a rich archival record to reveal powerful insights into the lives of Black enlisted and non-commissioned officers. In this talk she presents the complexities of post life, racialized relationships, Black masculinity, and citizenship.

We hope to see you on the 4th of April for the talk, in zoomland or in person. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact Meredith Chesson (mchesson@nd.edu) for clarification.

Originally published at al.nd.edu.