Fiona Vernal

Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies

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Ph.D., Yale

Areas of Specialty

Africa; 19th century South African history; Christianity in South Africa; slavery; urban history

Current Research Interests

Gender, Slavery and the Law, Caribbean/West Indian migration, Public History, Urban history, housing

Recent Awards

2022           CT Humanities Partnership Grant
2022           Research Excellence Program (REP)
2022           CLAS Research Funding Opportunity: Sustainable Systems, Global Resources, and World Cultures
2021           Provost’s Awards for Excellence in Community Engaged Scholarship
2021           SGCI (Sustainable Global Cities Initiative) Faculty Research Grant
2021           UCHI UConn Humanities Institute Fellowship (Academic year writing fellowship)
2020           NEH Humanities Connections Grant (Digital Media & Design and History Tom Scheinfeldt, PI, Fiona Vernal Co-PI)
2020           Africana Studies, Faculty Research Grant
2019            New England Humanities Consortium Grant Co-PI with Jason Oliver Chang
2019           UConn, CLAS Office of the Dean, “Frontiers in Historical GIS, the GeoHumanities, and Narrative Visualization Symposium”
2019           CT Humanities Quick Grant
2019           University of New Hampshire Summer Institute in Public Humanities
2017           Initiative on Campus Dialogues, UCHI Humility & Conviction in Public Life
2014           University of Connecticut, UCHI, Digital Start-up Grant
2011           University of Connecticut, Faculty Large Grant
2008          Woodrow Wilson National Foundation Award

Media

Dr. Vernal discusses Caribbean migration to the Greater Hartford region with state historian Walt Woodward on “Grating the Nutmeg,” episode 51, June 16, 2018; accompanying exhibition, “A Home Away from Home: Greater Hartford’s West Indian Diaspora” on view Windsor Historical Society until Dec 31, 2021.

Dr. Vernal discusses the intricacies of mounting, writing, and curating an exhibition and teaching a course on child labor and human rights in the cocoa industry for the exhibition, “The Hidden Costs of Chocolate: How Child Labor Became A Human Rights Issue.”

Short Biography

Fiona Vernal is the Director of Engaged, Public, Oral, and Community Histories (EPOCH) and Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at the University of Connecticut. In 2023 she will serve as the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the History Department, Interim Associate Director of Africana Studies, PI on CT Humanities Partnership Grant to establish an infrastructure for oral history in the state, and Co-PI on the University Capacity Development Program with the Global Training and Development Institute (GTDI) in Global Affairs.

Her teaching and research center African, Caribbean, African Diaspora histories. She curates a number of public-facing projects, all of which center oral history as part of its core methodology. Current and past exhibits include: “A Home away from Home: Greater Hartford’s West Indian Diaspora;” “From Civil Rights to Human Rights: African American, Puerto Rican, and West Indian Housing Struggles in Hartford County, Connecticut, 1940-2019,” (2020);“Child Labor and Human Rights in Africa: The Hidden Costs of Chocolate,” (2018); “Children of the Soil: Generations of South Africans under Apartheid,” (2016).  Her book, The Farmerfield Mission (Oxford, 2012) explores the African vernacularization of Christianity in nineteenth century South Africa. Her new book and digital humanities project, Hartford Bound, integrates oral histories, archival research, and GIS methodologies to offer new visual and spatial histories of race, ethnic belonging, community formation, and community succession.  She was awarded the University of Connecticut’s Provost Award for Excellence in Community Engaged Scholarship in 2021.

Longer Biography

Fiona Vernal is a native of Trelawny, Jamaica and grew up in Trenton, New Jersey. She earned her BA in history with a certificate in African American Studies from Princeton University in 1995 and her MA and PhD from Yale. After completing her doctoral work in December 2003, she served as Director of African Studies at Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Since 2005 she has taught at the University of Connecticut’s Department of History where her courses focus on precolonial, and colonial Africa, the history of South Africa, slavery, and the African diaspora. Since 2015, her teaching pedagogy has shifted to incorporate inquiry-based learning and human rights practice, yielding the exhibits focusing on generational experiences of Apartheid in South Africa, child labor and human right in the Africa’s cocoa industry, African American, Puerto Rican, and West Indian migration and housing struggles in the Hartford area.

Her book, The Farmerfield Mission (Oxford, 2012) explores the relationship between African Christian converts and European missionaries. At Farmerfield, the politics of land access, land alienation and the  European civilizing mission of intersected with grand visions of social and economic progress in nineteenth century South Africa.

Dr. Vernal consults with the Connecticut Historical Society on oral history projects including an exhibit documenting and recording the impact of 9/11 on Connecticut victims, families, and first responders: September 11, Connecticut Responds and Reflects. A second exhibit documented the history of West Indian migrants to the Greater Hartford area: Finding a Place, Maintaining Ties: Greater Hartford’s West Indians, with a successor exhibit premiering at the West Indian Social Club of Hartford, “A Home away From Home,” and serving as the inspiration to create a new Caribbean museum in Hartford.

Current Digital Projects

Hartford Bound, a GIS exploration of race, migration, and settlement in Hartford: HartfordBound.com

Caribbean Mosaics, an exploration of the history of Caribbean migration to Hartford in the 20^th century: Caribbeanmosaics.com

Current Book Project

The latest book project, Hartford Bound, integrates oral histories, archival research, and GIS methodologies to reframe the history of how Hartford became home. By exploring the intersections of space, place, mobility, and identity, Hartford Bound centers the history and experiences of the city’s residents. The book offers counter narratives to hardened scripts of slum clearance, white suburban flight, redlining, urban renewal, and gentrification. These declension narratives of urban decline and pathology obscure alternative visions and experiences of the city. The project offers new visual and spatial histories of race, ethnic belonging, community formation, and community succession. The book features an accompanying digital humanities project, HartfordBound.com currently in beta mode.

Selected Publications

“‘No Such Thing as a Mulatto Slave’: Legal Pluralism, Racial Descent and the Nuances of Slave Women’s Sexual Vulnerability in the Legal Odyssey of Steyntje van de Kaap, c.1815-1822. Slavery & Abolition 29, no.1. (Jan 2008): 23-47.

“A Truly Christian Village:” The Farmerfield Mission as a Novel Turn in Methodist Evangelical Strategies, Eastern Cape, South Africa, 1838-1883, South African Historical Journal 61(2)(2009):407-428.

— “Discourse Networks and Moral Transcripts in the Cape Colony, 1750-1850.” African Historical Review 43 (2) (2011): 1-36.

— “Discourses of Land Use, Land Access and Land Rights at Farmerfield and Loeriesfontein in Nineteenth-Century South Africa,” in Indigenous Communities and Settler Colonialism: Land Holding, Loss, and Survival in an Interconnected World, Zoe Laidlaw and Alan Lester, eds (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, 2015), 102-137.

Book Chapters

— “Discourses of Land Use, Land Access and Land Rights at Farmerfield and Loeriesfontein in Nineteenth-Century South Africa,” in Indigenous Communities and Settler Colonialism: Land Holding, Loss, and Survival in an Interconnected World, Zoe Laidlaw and Alan Lester, eds (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, 2015), 102-137.

— “Blackening my white friends to make my black friends look white: William Shaw, John Philip, and the mercurial political landscape of missionary work in the Eastern Cape,” in Magnifying Perspectives Contributions to History, A festschrift for Robert Ross, Iva Peša and Jan-Bart Gewald, eds, (Leiden: African Studies Centre, 2017), 37-52.

Book Reviews

—Review of Missionary Masculinity, 1870-1930: The Norwegian Missionaries in South-East Africa, by Kristen Fjelde Tjelle, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 48 (1) (2015):144-145.
—Review of The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa, by Richard Elphick, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 46 (2) (2013):344-346.
—Review of A Living Man from Africa, by Roger Levine, Journal of World History 23:3 (September 2012).

Invited Talks/Presentation

“Three Great Migrations: How to frame Puerto Rican, African American, and West Indian History,” Hartford History Lecture Series, 23 September 2020.

“Race, Ethnicity, and Community Succession in Post-War Hartford: Using Historical GIS to Explore the Racial Dynamics of Neighborhood Change,” Frontiers in Historical GIS, the GeoHumanities, Narrative Visualization Symposium, Chair and Presenter, 27 February 2020.

“‘Migrant Zero,’ Chain Migration, and Black Flight among West Indians in Hartford County, Connecticut,” University of Connecticut, Caribbean Research Symposium, 17 May 2019.

“Mobility, Housing, and Settlement: Mobility, Settlement, and Housing: The Long Arc of African American Housing Struggles,” Connecticut General Assembly, 21 February 2020.

“The Hidden Costs of Chocolate: How Child Labor Became a Human Rights Crisis,” Eastern Connecticut State University, 20 March 2019.

“Migrant Zero: Caribbean Immigrant Narratives,” John Nicholas Brown, Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University, 14 March 2019.

“Blackening my White Friends to Make my Black Friends Look White: William Shaw, John Philip, and the Mercurial Political Landscape of Missionary work in the Eastern Cape,” Robert Ross Valedictory workshop and Festschrift, Leiden University, Netherlands, 17 and 18 September 2014.

“Discourses of Land Use, Land Access and Land Rights at Farmerfield and Loeriesfontein in Nineteenth-Century South Africa,” Workshop: Dispossession: Indigenous Survival, Land holding, and Loss in the Midst of Settler Colonialism, University of Sussex, 4 July 2013.

Oral History and Other Professional Activities

—Africa Network: (Promoting the Study of Africa in Liberal Arts Institutions) Board of Directors, 2005- present

—Oral Historian, Connecticut Historical Society, September 11th: Connecticut Responds and Reflects, July 2006-August 2006; Connecticut Historical Society, West Indian Documentation Project and for exhibit: “Finding a Place, Maintaining Ties: Greater Hartford’s West Indians,” Fall 1999-Fall 2000 

—Oxford Studies in World Christianity, Editorial Board, 2006-present

—Connecticut Historical Society, Board of Trustees, 2008-2014; Vice-President, Board of Trustees, 2014-present

—West Indian Foundation, Board Member 2016-present

Reviewer

—South African Historical Journal (SAHJ)
—International Journal of African Historical Studies (IJAHS)
—Baylor University Press
—Oxford University Press
—Anthem Press
 —University of Virginia Press

Boards

Amistad Center for Art and Culture
Caribbean Cultural Heritage Alliance (CCHA)
Connecticut Museum of History and Culture, CMHC
West Indian Foundation