Lecture: Stanley Engerman February 24, 2005

Stanley Engerman, the John Munro Professor of Economics and professor of history at the University of Rochester in New York, will give Carleton College?s 2004-05 Phi Beta Kappa lecture titled ?Slavery and its Aftermath in the United States? at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 24 in the Gould Library Athenaeum. The event is free and open to the public.

Engerman will discuss factors in the development of American slavery, its economic and social impact on slaves and masters and the ensuing debates over abolition. He also will talk about the impact of freedom on income, wealth, education, family patterns and attitudes towards race, as well as the effects of the northward movement after 1910 and the expansion of the civil rights movement after World War II.

Engerman earned his B.S. and M.B.A. degrees at New York University and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He joined the faculty at Rochester in 1963 and earned the Munro professorship in 1984. He has been the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University. He is past president of both the Economic History Association and the Social Science History Association. In addition, he has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He has written extensively on economic history and the history of slavery. He wrote the 1975 Bancroft Prize-winning book, ?Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery,? with Robert William Fogel. The Bancroft Prize, one of the most distinguished awards in the field of history, is presented annually by the Columbia University Board of Trustees to the authors of books of exceptional merit and distinction in the fields of American history and biography. The book challenges traditional assumptions of slavery, asserting that the practice was, in fact, economically efficient and profitable, and that the economy of the South was growing up to the Civil War. Even after 30 years, and a 1993 Nobel Prize in economics for Fogel, ?Time on the Cross? remains one of the most fiercely debated works of U.S. history in the 20th century.

Engerman has been editor or co-editor of, among others, ?The Reinterpretation of American Economic History,? ?The Cambridge Economic History of the United States: A Historical Guide to World Slavery,? ?Terms of Labor? and, in preparation, ?The Cambridge World History of Slavery (Vols. 1-4).? He has commented on a wide range of issues regarding American slavery, including whether the Civil War was necessary to eliminate slavery, the consequences of slavery and emancipation for American society and the possibility of some form of reparations for descendants of slaves. He is currently on the editorial boards of Slavery and Abolition; Explorations in Economic History and The Encyclopedia of World Trade Since 1450.

Engerman's visit is part of the 2004-05 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program and is sponsored by Carleton?s Phi Beta Kappa chapter and the Carleton departments of economics and history.

The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program makes available 12 or more distinguished scholars each year who visit 100 colleges and universities with Phi Beta Kappa chapters. Scholars spend two days on each campus, meeting informally with students and faculty members, taking part in classroom discussions and giving a public lecture. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the institution by making possible an exchange of ideas between the visiting scholars and the resident faculty and students. Founded in 1776, Phi Beta Kappa is the nation's oldest academic honor society. It has chapters at 270 colleges and universities and over 500,000 members.

For more information and disability accommodations, call Susan Quay in Carleton?s economics department at (507) 646-4109.