Unsettling the Legacy of S. M. Swenson: Swedish Immigration and Slavery in 19th Century Texas

Lecturer
Lucia Hodgson, American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellow and Guest Researcher, LNUCC

Title
Unsettling the Legacy of S. M. Swenson: Swedish Immigration and Slavery in 19th Century Texas

Abstract
This project complicates the traditional history of Swedish-American immigration as that of yeoman farmers settling in the Midwest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It contributes to the emerging history of Swedish engagement with American chattel slavery, and enriches the existing history of Texas’s establishment of white hegemony. The project argues that Swedish and Texan exceptionalisms with regard to slavery have reinforced each other and together contributed to the enduring myth that slavery played an insignificant role in Swedish-American settler colonialism and Texas state development.

Information
The seminar will be held in English. 

Please send an email to concurrences@lnu.se if you want to participate via Zoom. 

Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies