Book analyzes freedom after emancipation

David W. Blight, a professor of history at Yale University,  and Jim Downs, an associate professor of history at Connecticut College, have co-authored a collection of essays that interrogate the concept of freedom and re-centers understanding of the process of emancipation.

Published by the University of Georgia Press, Beyond Freedom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation contains 11 essays that set out to answer questions about freedom and what it meant to 19th-century African-Americans during and after slavery.

In examining such questions, rather than defining every aspect of post-
emancipation life as a new form of freedom, these essays develop the work of scholars who are looking at how belonging to an empowered government or community defines the outcome of emancipation.

Some essays in this collection disrupt the traditional story and time frame of emancipation, some offer new interpretations of the politics of democracy and others reconsider how historians have used source material for understanding subjects.