The Alexandrian Society, an undergraduate historical society in VCU's Department of History, welcomes Shauna Sweeney, Ph.D. Sweeney is a historian of slavery, freedom, gender and the African diaspora and is the 2016-18 NEH Postdoctoral Fellow at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. She teaches at the College of William and Mary where she is conducting research on the role of female-centered market networks, their contribution to the Atlantic economy and how they were used by enslaved black women as a means to transition to freedom.

Sweeney, who received her Ph.D. in history from New York University where she has previously taught, and is working on the book "A Free Enterprise: Market Women, Insurgent Economies and the Making of Caribbean Freedom" and will cover several themes from the work in her lecture. 

The event is sponsored by the VCU Division of Inclusive Excellence and is free and open to the public. For more information, email William Clark at clarkwt2@vcu.edu.