The New York Times has turned to UConn History Professor Alexis Dudden for her insights into the overlooked stories of “comfort women, ” as apart of their series on unreported death in The Times. Having interviewed survivors of  state-sponsored sexual slavery during WWII era Japan, Alexis Dudden reflects on the life on Kim Hak-soon, who was detained by Japanese soldiers while living in China in 1941. As Prof. Dudden explains in the Times article, Kim-Hak-soon “remains one of the bravest people of the 20th century,” who was around 15 when she was taken.  In 1991, Kim Hak-soon first publicly shared her story and later recorded her testimony in the 1993 book, The Korean Comfort Women Who Were Coercively Dragged Away for the Military, Vol. 1. For more about the life of Kim Hak-soon, her activism, and the sexual slavery sponsored by the Japanese state, please read the Times article, “Overlooked No More: Kim Hak-soon, Who Broke the Silence for Comfort Women.”

Save the date! On Monday, 10/11, UConn History Professor Manisha Sinha will deliver the keynote address at the Race and Slavery in New England Symposium, sponsored by the Museum of Old Newbury. The conference will take place from 8:30-5:30pm with in-person and online options. Professor Sinha will speak at 8:45am on the “Abolitionist International.” From the event website:

Sinha explores how Garrisonian abolitionists built transnational networks of protest by aligning antislavery with pacifism, women’s rights, and utopian socialism. Abolition overlapped with contemporary radical social movements, including the struggle for the rights of labor. The talk will address both the convergences as well as conflicts between these movements.

Check out the registration and event details!  This will be an excellent and timely talk and conference!

UConn History Professor Micki McElya has been featured in a New York Times article about the first time that women performed the changing of the guard at Arlington National Cemetery in 84 years. Last week,  Sergeant Porterfield and two other soldiers walked with her and participated in the sacred duty. According to Prof. McElya, “the images of the three female soldiers were a “visual marker” of the often unrecognized sacrifices that women and other marginalized people in the United States have made for the military.” 

Please read and share this excellent NYT article!

UConn Today has highlighted the recent and monumental research of UConn History Professor Cornelia Dayton. Professor Dayton has made groundbreaking recoveries into the lives of prominent African-born writer, Phillis Wheatley, and her free husband, John Peters. For years, scholars were unsure about where Wheatley and Peters had gone after they left Boston. Using legal papers from Essex County, Massachusetts, Dayton uncovered that Phillis Wheatley and John Peters spent 3 years in Middleton, MA, on a farm where Peters had been enslaved. For Dayton, this work challenges the myth that nothing, or very little, exists about the lives of people of color in New England.  Dayton’s research proves that in following “the small details,” we can arrive at new understandings of freedom, race, and gender that complicate what we think we know about the individual lives of people of color.

A job well done! Be sure to stay tuned for more developments, including a website! In the meantime, read the award-winning article in the September 2021 New England Quarterly and check out the @Wheatley_Peters Twitter!