The Emancipation Circuit

Thulani Davis
Thulani Davis is an interdisciplinary artist and historian, whose work includes poetry, theater works, and cultural criticism. Ms. Davis wrote the libretti for Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X and his Amistad, and many other musical works. Her forthcoming operas are The Little Rock Nine by Bernadette Speech and Fire Across the Tracks: Tulsa 1921 by Anthony Davis. Her produced plays include Everybody’s Ruby: Story of a Murder in Florida, The Souls of Black Folk: An Oratorio for Five Actors, the adaptation for George C. Wolfe’s production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and Where the Mississippi Meets the Amazon with Ntozake Shange and Jessica Hagedorn. Ms. Davis wrote the book and lyrics for The Sojourner Washing Society, A Musical in Gospel & Blues with Steven Robinson. She has written the scripts for several narrative films and award-winning documentaries. The author of six books, she has two new works: Nothin but the Music (2020) and The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom (2022). She is a professor and a Nellie Y. McKay Fellow in African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Bianca Dang
Bianca Dang is an Assistant Professor and the Donald W. Logan Family Endowed Chair of American History at the University of Washington. She is currently working on her first book manuscript, Making Meaningful Freedom: Gendered Struggles for Autonomy in Haiti and the United States, 1780-1880. Her research and teaching focus on the histories of Black freedom movements and state coercion across the African Diaspora, with a particular focus on the nineteenth century.