The Art of War

Conflict and the African American Philosophy

Presenter Biographies

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2

Things They Carried: An African Philosophy on War, Surviving Enslavement and Citizenship

Grant E. Stanton is Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Drew University.  Grant’s research interests range widely across the landscape of early American (pre-1865) and Atlantic history, with a focus on the contributions Black actors made to the creation of the modern world.Grant’s book manuscript studies the birth of formal Black politics in the American Revolution, including the central role Black colonists in Massachusetts played in leading the first organized, interracial, and successful abolition movement in American history. Outside of this project, Grant is also investigating the establishment, politicization, demise and revival of Black education programs in early America, and a third project which uses insults as an entry point for understanding the enfolded racial, sexual, classist, and religious prejudices that structured early American moral culture.

 

Akeia de Barros Gomes (moderator) is Vice-President of Maritime Studies at the Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, Connecticut where she directs the Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies.  Akeia is responsible for working on curatorial projects of race, Indigenous histories, ethnicity and diversity in New England's Maritime activities. She is lead curator for the 2024 Mystic Seaport exhibition, Entwined: The Sea, Sovereignty and Freedom, a multi-year Mellon Foundation-funded project that reimagines the history of the founding and development of New England through Indigenous, African, and African American maritime narratives. Dr. de Barros Gomes has engaged in archaeological fieldwork on the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Reservation in Mashantucket, CT; in the US Virgin Islands and in Newport, RI. She has engaged in Anthropological fieldwork in the US Virgin Islands, in Benin, and in New Orleans. Akeia was professor of American Studies and Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Wheelock College from 2008 to 2017. And Curator of Social History at the New Bedford Whaling Museum from 2017 to 2021.   She holds a PhD in Anthropology with a focus in Archaeology from The University of Connecticut. 

 

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 9

Hopes and Impediments: War and Strategies for Belonging

Glenn A. Knoblock is an independent scholar and author of over twenty books. Knoblock has served as the main military contributor to Harvard and Oxford University's landmark African American National Biography, and he has also written for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. His work documents a wide variety of subjects in New Hampshire and New England history, including African American history, historic cemeteries and grave markers, as well as covered bridges, the Kancamagus Highway, and New Hampshire's loon population. He holds a B.A. in History from Bowling Green State University.

Bob Sheppard is a former broadcast journalist and the son of Master Sgt. James A. Sheppard, a member of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. Bob is known for his work preserving history and educating others about the contributions of African Americans to aviation. He has shared his father's story through a documentary film, presentations, and other events.  During his time in the service, Bob's father's experienced segregation on the train ride to Alabama, training at the Tuskegee Institute, and service overseas with the 332nd Fighter Squadron. After returning from Italy, Bob's father worked for Lockheed Aircraft and the Federal Aviation Administration before moving to Maine in the 1970s.

Mack Scott (moderator)  is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Slavery and Justice at Brown University.  An historian and educator, he is member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe. His work focuses on the intersections of race and identity and employs agency as a lens through which to view and understand the voices, stories, and perspectives of traditionally marginalized peoples. He has published works illuminating the experiences of African American, Native American, and Latinx peoples. He is currently working on a project that traces the Narragansett nation from the pre-colonial to the modern era.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16

The Great Migration: Military Service and the Shaping of a Diversified New Hampshire

Andrea Williamson, a financial advisor for Edward Jones in Kennebunk, Maine, spent seven years at the Pentagon and in the United States Air Force European Joint Command, and 15 years with Allstate Insurance before joining Edward Jones.  Williamson is an inclusion leader working to increase race and gender diversity among financial advisors.  She was awarded an executive education scholarship from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, where she attended the practical innovators' course.

Leah Dearborn, was appointed assistant director of the Aviation Museum in Manchester, NH, in June of 2021, and was promoted to associate director in April 2024.  She holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and in 2019 earned a Master’s degree in International Relations from University of Massachusetts Boson, McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies.  Dearborn also earned a certificate in Modern Media from Yale University in 2017.  Her professional background includes working as a reporter and newspaper editor.  Her stories have appeared in publications around New England, including in the Boston Globe.  Dearborn is the author of Grenier Field:  A Beacon on the Home Front (2024), and frequently speaks on the topic of “The Black Experience at Grenier.” 

Nadine Petty (moderator) is Chief Diversity Officer and Associate Vice President for Community, Equity, and Diversity at the University of New Hampshire.  Having spent her early formative years in Jamaica, Dr. Nadine Petty comes to UNH with an international lens. Nadine has over twenty years of experience in educational settings and has devoted herself to a wide range of diversity and social justice causes and endeavors which include teaching cultural ethnography in college classrooms, serving on and leading various diversity-related committees and boards, creating and strengthening services for individuals with marginalized identities, and providing numerous interactive diversity and social justice workshops and trainings to students, colleagues, and community members.  Prior to arriving at UNH, Nadine served as Executive Director of the Center for Diversity and Enrichment at the University of Iowa.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23

Eyes on the Prize: Protests, Movements, and the Road Ahead

Noelle N. Trent, is president and CEO of the Museum of African American History Boston/Nantucket.  Dr. Trent earned a Masters degree in Public History, and a Ph.D. in United States History from Howard University in Washington, DC.  She has worked with noted organizations and projects including the National  Park Service, the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, where she contributed to the exhibition Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom: The Era of Segregation 1876 – 1968. She was the Director of Interpretation, Collections & Education at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis prior to coming to Boston.  Trent  has been a contributor to the African American Intellectual History Society’s blog, and was featured in “Breaking Free: An Underground Special” for the WGN America drama Underground.

Jason Sokol (moderator) is a professor of History at the University of New Hampshire.  His work focuses on the history of the Civil Rights Movement.  He is the author of three books: There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights (Alfred A. Knopf), which was named one of the 10 best books of 2006 in the Washington Post Book World; All Eyes Are Upon Us: Race and Politics from Boston to Brooklyn (Basic Books, 2014); and The Heavens Might Crack: The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Basic Books, 2018).  Sokol graduated from Oberlin College, and received his doctorate in history from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the recipient of post-doctoral fellowships from Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University. He was also awarded a Public Scholar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Dr. Sokol has published articles in a variety of scholarly journals as well as popular publications including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Politico, and The Root.