Chair Christy Clark-Pujara and UW African American Studies: New Name, Same Mission
Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara joined the UW-Madison African American Studies Department in 2009 and became its chair last fall.
by Jonathan Gramling
On many levels, “Critical Race Theory” is nothing new. What is new is that it became a focal point for the right-wing culture wars that are in denial about America’s past and the foundation that the country was built on.
The field of study that Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara, chair of the UW-Madison African American Studies Department, has worked in since her doctoral studies could be labeled part of “Critical Race Theory.” But it is merely the telling of the history of pre-Civil War America.
“I’m what historians call an Early Americanist,” Clark-Pujara said. “I am even more interested in how the institution of slavery, the economy, politics and society interacted. My dissertation and first book was centered on the institution of slavery in Rhode Island and how the practice of race-based slavery shaped that place and the experience of Black freedom there.”
While the common perception is that the enslavement of Africans was relegated to southern plantations, it is an institution that permeated the fabric of American society. It was an institution in which all Americans during that period benefited directly or indirectly from that hiseous institution.
“My first book was called ‘Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island,’” Clark-Pujara said. “It was that the experiences of free and enslaved people of African descent from the founding of the colony in 1636 through the American Civil War. And in that book, I argued that you can’t understand the formation of the colony without understanding race-based slavery because it becomes the center of the economy. My kind of ‘go-to’ fact to try to center that for folks is between 60-80 percent of every slave ship that left a port in North America left from a port in Rhode Island. And it was the center of the North American trade
in African slaves. If we are thinking about it from just the North American vantage point, one, this is a northern business and in particular, a New England business. And it really bolstered the economy of the north. Slave ships were built in the north. They were maintained in the north. They sailed from the north. And their routes generally New England to West Africa, West Africa to South America and the Caribbean and then back to New England.”
And it wasn’t just the trading-shipping class that benefited from the institution of slavery.
“You have a bilateral trade between northern farmers and merchants and the Caribbean or as they called it, the West Indies,” Clark-Pujara said. “So the farmers in the north, the New England farmers in particular, were growing foodstuffs for the slave population of the Caribbean and West Indies. That’s really highlighted during the American Revolution. When those ships couldn’t get to the West Indies anymore because of the blockades, you have massive famine because they had become so dependent on the food trade between New England and the West Indies. The book really explores the economy of slavery, the political economy of slavery and then what that meant for enslaved people and how they lived their lives, and the kind of labor that they did. People often associate American slavery with plantation labor in the colonial period, tobacco and rice. But less attention is paid to enslaved people in northern cities and on farms. And their lives were consumed with the business of slavery because they were held by people who were supporting the business of slavery. It’s just reminding folks of the interconnectedness of the northern and southern economies. They weren’t in competition. They were in concert.”
When Clark-Pujara speaks of the Africans who were forcibly removed from African and forced to perform menial labor without compensation, she uses terms like “race-based slavery” that are factual and not emotionally laden or judgmental.
“I’m very intentional about terminology,” Clark-Pujara said. “That is something that I spend talking to students about. The first thing I talk to them about is we don’t call people ’slaves.’ We refer to them as ‘enslaved.’ We don’t talk about ‘masters.’ We talk about ‘enslavers’ because it is an active thing to steal somebody’s liberty ever hour of every day. It is something that is done by entire societies and not just one individual. It’s not about one person’s ability to hold another person in bondage. It’s about the society that allows it, supports it and protects it.”
Clark-Pujara is honored to serve as the chair of African American Studies. It is the department that gave her a boost in the waning days of her doctoral studies at the University of Iowa in 2009 and jump started her professorial career.
“I am deeply indebted to this department for many reasons,” Clark-Pujara said. “I went on the job market early. I wasn’t really expecting to get offers. But I ended up with a couple of offers and I wasn’t done with my dissertation quite yet. And I was very honest that I wasn’t done yet, but I could get done. When I got the call from Craig Werner, who was the chair at the time, I was really kind of taken aback. I wasn’t expecting it. It was, in many ways, exactly the call that I wanted, but I didn’t think I would get it. I told him I would get done and I was able to come in on a fellowship, which means no teaching responsibility and no administrative or meeting responsibilities. And so that first semester of fellowship, I did indeed finish the dissertation and graduated. And then I started the following academic year as an assistant professor. I really appreciated that the department, one, trusted me to finish, and two gave me the space I needed to finish through that fellowship.”
And the department continued its support long after Clark-Pujara joined the department.
“I had two kids while I was on the tenure track,” Clark-Pujara said. “My colleagues were nothing but supportive of me in that process. I brought my kids to meetings at times. I brought my kids to events. I never received anything but welcome when I did that. I didn’t do it often, but when I needed to, I knew that I could. And so I was in a department that supported me as a whole person. I know that doesn’t happen everywhere.”
But the department certainly received something in return. They retained a scholar on the cusp of a new way of looking at American history.
“Doing the work that I was doing, it was right on the cusp of a change in the field,” Clark-Pujara said. “People were really starting to take slavery and capitalism seriously in the mainstream academy. Slavery and capitalism had for a long time been talked about in Black studies departments. But it had not become part of mainstream core curriculum and research study in mainstream academic history departments. The department was excited about the fact that I was doing that work that was on the cusp. I came in with a very generous research package that allowed me to go back to Rhode Island to do the research I needed to do to get done. I had very supportive colleagues.”
Next issue: The beginning of the African American Studies Department.