2023 Bishop Lecture: Researching the Underground Railroad in the Digital Age

Professor Graham Hodges, the George Dorland Langdon Jr. Professor of History and Africana Studies at Colgate University, will deliver the 2023 Louis Faugères Bishop III Lecture, “Researching the Underground Railroad in the Digital Age,” on Thursday, March 23, at 4:00 p.m. This year’s lecture will be held online. Please register at this link.

Professor Hodges is the author of numerous books, including several related to African Americans in New Jersey. He is the author of Black New Jersey, 1664 to the Present Day (Rutgers University Press, 2019), Pretends to Be Free: Runaway Slave Advertisements from Colonial and Revolutionary New York and New Jersey (Fordham University Press, 2019), Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613–1863 (The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), and Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County, New Jersey, 1660–1865 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997). He has directed eight National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminars (for teachers) on abolitionism and the Underground Railroad.

The Bishop Lectures feature diverse topics on book and manuscript collecting, printing history, and the use of rare books and manuscripts. The series is named in memory of Louis Faugères Bishop Jr.’s son, a prominent cardiologist and book lover who helped build one of the excellent New York private libraries at the New York Racquet Club. Although he was a Yale University alumnus, Dr. Bishop had close family ties to Rutgers and New Brunswick—Bishop House and Bishop Place on the College Avenue campus were named after his ancestors. Dr. Bishop attended the first Bishop Lecture in 1985 but sadly died the following year.