About This Event
Reading the Land: Nat Turner's Prophetic Geography and the Landscape of Rebellion
November 14 at 1:00PM
On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner led the deadliest slave rebellion in American history. The standard accounts tell us when and what happened. This talk asks a different question: how did Turner know it was time? Drawing on Turner's own account of visions, atmospheric signs, and sacred places, Dr. Shana Haines examines the landscape of the rebellion as a prophetic text — one rooted in both evangelical Christianity and African spiritual traditions that never fully disappeared. By reading Southampton County's geography alongside Turner's theology, this talk offers a new interpretive framework for understanding one of the most studied and least understood events in American history.
Help us continue offering free programming with a $5 donation! Your support helps fund future educational programs and preservation efforts at our National Historical Site.
Lecture presented by Dr. Shana L. Haines
Dr. Shana L. Haines is an interdisciplinary scholar of African American history, law, and resistance whose work examines how Black Americans contested racial violence, claimed citizenship, and asserted self-determination in the nineteenth century. Drawing on her training in legal studies, literary analysis, and American Studies, she investigates the legal, political, and spatial dimensions of Black resistance, from constitutional struggles during Reconstruction to the landscapes where enslaved and free Black communities organized, moved, and fought back.
Dr. Haines holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the College of William & Mary, an M.A. from Hunter College, and a J.D. from Boston University School of Law. She practiced law in New York City before entering the academy, where she is a Professor at Tidewater Community College. Her public humanities work brings scholarly research into conversation with landscape, place, and community memory, including her ongoing work on the geography of Black resistance in antebellum Virginia.
About This Event
Reading the Land: Nat Turner's Prophetic Geography and the Landscape of Rebellion
November 14 at 1:00PM
On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner led the deadliest slave rebellion in American history. The standard accounts tell us when and what happened. This talk asks a different question: how did Turner know it was time? Drawing on Turner's own account of visions, atmospheric signs, and sacred places, Dr. Shana Haines examines the landscape of the rebellion as a prophetic text — one rooted in both evangelical Christianity and African spiritual traditions that never fully disappeared. By reading Southampton County's geography alongside Turner's theology, this talk offers a new interpretive framework for understanding one of the most studied and least understood events in American history.
Help us continue offering free programming with a $5 donation! Your support helps fund future educational programs and preservation efforts at our National Historical Site.
Lecture presented by Dr. Shana L. Haines
Dr. Shana L. Haines is an interdisciplinary scholar of African American history, law, and resistance whose work examines how Black Americans contested racial violence, claimed citizenship, and asserted self-determination in the nineteenth century. Drawing on her training in legal studies, literary analysis, and American Studies, she investigates the legal, political, and spatial dimensions of Black resistance, from constitutional struggles during Reconstruction to the landscapes where enslaved and free Black communities organized, moved, and fought back.
Dr. Haines holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the College of William & Mary, an M.A. from Hunter College, and a J.D. from Boston University School of Law. She practiced law in New York City before entering the academy, where she is a Professor at Tidewater Community College. Her public humanities work brings scholarly research into conversation with landscape, place, and community memory, including her ongoing work on the geography of Black resistance in antebellum Virginia.