Professor Tess Chakkalakal of Bowdoin College speaks on local abolitionist circles and the importance of preserving physical ties to our literary past.

Tess Chakkalakal [pronounced “Chah-KAHL-ickle”] has published widely on nineteenth-century African American and American literature. She is the author of Novel Bondage: Slavery, Marriage, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century America (Illinois, 2011) which earned the Robert K. Martin Prize for best book on American literature from the Canadian Association of American Studies.  She is co-editor of Jim Crow, Literature, and the Legacy of Sutton E. Griggs (Georgia, 2013). Professor Chakkalakal has earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Duke University, Emory University, and the Mellon Foundation.