Month: July 2025

UConn History at Shear 2025

Over the weekend of July 17-20, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic held their annual conference in Providence, Rhode Island, where UConn history was well-represented. Manisha Sinha, Draper Chair in American History and outgoing president of SHEAR, moderated the president’s plenary panel and delivered the presidential address, while current faculty members Cornelia Dayton, Deirdre Cooper Owens, and Melanie Newport helped to lead several panels and workshops.

Current UConn History Graduate Students Alex Keuny, Timothy Brown, and Lincoln Hirn also presented their work, as part of panel discussions. UConn History alumni Kathryn Angelica, Nathan Braccio, Nicole Breault (who also served on the program committee), Allison Horrocks, Antwain Hunter, and Amy Sopcak-Joseph all presented, as well.

Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age

Sylvia R. Frey, Author, with foreword by Manisha Sinha

Princeton University Press, 2025

 

Abstract:

black and white image of revolutionary figures struggling, with book title and author's name overlaid in contrasting white and yellow text

The American Revolution brought about violent and unpredictable social changes throughout the new nation, particularly in the South. Sylvia Frey reveals how slave resistance gave rise to a Black liberation movement that was central to the revolutionary struggle in the southern colonies, and how Black resistance persisted after the war as a struggle for cultural power that manifested itself in the establishment of separate Black churches with distinctive ritual patterns and moral values. She examines how white Southerners responded to Black resistance amid their own fight for independence from the British, and how they reacted to new movements by African Americans in the postwar period. With an incisive foreword by Manisha Sinha, Water from the Rock shows how the upheavals of war created opportunities for a quiet revolution that laid the foundations for the modern civil rights movement in America.