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Before 13th: The Origin of Convict Leasing

Michael Ralph
Monday, October 01, 2018
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Michael Ralph, New York University
AAAS Lecture Series

Free and Open to the Public
Light refreshments served

Michael Ralph holds a B.A. in Africana Studies from Morris Brown College and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. He teaches in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis and the School of Medicine at New York University. His research integrates political science, economics, history, and medical anthropology through an explicit focus on debt, slavery, insurance, forensics, and incarceration.

Ralph's 2015 book, Forensics of Capital, was followed by two recent book projects centered on slavery, insurance, and incarceration. Life explores how the U.S. insurance industry affixes monetary value to human life and Before 13th revises the scholarly consensus on the history of convict leasing, demonstrating that it did not begin with the 13thamendment, but several decades prior.

This is the first installment in a series of lectures hosted by the Department of African & African American Studies.