UMBC's annual Low Lecture features Kevin Dawson, associate professor of history at the University of California, Merced, who will speak on Liquid Motion: Canoeing and Surfing in Atlantic Africa and the Diaspora, 1444–1888. This event is part of the Spring 2024 Social Sciences Forum.

“Liquid Motion” examines how African women and men perceived, understood, and interacted with oceans and rivers through swimming, underwater diving, surfing, canoe-making, and canoeing. Africans inspire us to rethink assumptions about maritime history, by considering maritime traditions that Westerns lacked. Enslaved Africans carried these maritime traditions to the Americas, where they used them to benefit their exploited lives and enslavers exploited them to generate wealth.

Kevin Dawson is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Merced. He received a B.A. and an M.A. in History from California State University, Fullerton, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of South Carolina. In 2004, he was a Ford Dissertation Fellow. His research interests include Atlantic history, early American history, and the African Diaspora.

Admission is free.

Organized by the Department of History and cosponsored by the Center for Social Science Scholarship.

Photo provided by the speaker.