This session focusses on two Wedgwood medallions of 1788 and 1789. The first depicts a kneeling African who asks: ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’. This was the key emblem of Britain’s popular abolitionist movement, confronting the viewer with slavery’s reduction of the human to a thing. The other is the less well-known Sydney Cove Medallion, fashioned from clay sent back by Governor Arthur Phillip to London. When Erasmus Darwin juxtaposed the medallions in his The Botanic Garden (1791), we must ask ourselves: what does the anti-slavery movement have to do with the convict colony of Botany Bay?
Guiding you through a discussion of these two objects will be Professor Deirdre Coleman. She is Robert Wallace Professor of English at the University of Melbourne and Co-Director of the Research Unit in Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Contemporary Culture. She has recently authored Henry Smeathman, the Flycatcher: Natural History, Slavery, and Empire in the late Eighteenth Century (2018).
Being Human Festival 2020
This event is being held as part of the 2020 Being Human Festival. Founded in the UK as the only national festival of the humanities, Being Human is now a global celebration dedicated to demonstrating the breadth, diversity and vitality of the humanities.