Research Focus Group Talk: Encyclopédie Noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Intellectual World

Sara Johnson is professor of literature of the Americas at the University of California, San Diego. Her book, Encyclopédie noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Intellectual World (Omohundro Institute/UNC Press, 2023), documents the work of Moreau de Saint-Méry, a late eighteenth-century Caribbean intellectual. The book combines traditional academic chapters and experimental forms in its use of archival fragments and visual culture to tell the stories of the free people of color and enslaved women and men who enabled Moreau’s work.

Please read the provided chapters in advance of the event.

Sponsored by the IHC’s Slavery, Captivity and the Meaning of Freedom RFG, Department of Black Studies, and Department of History