What does it mean to still be in the age of the long emancipation? Have African Americans, and the African diaspora in the New World more broadly, attained true freedom or merely emancipation? Are reparations the first step to graduating out of emancipation where a more equitable society can finally be constructed? Dr. Rinaldo Walcott, Chair of the Department of Africana and American Studies at the University of Buffalo, visits the From Slavery to Freedom Lab at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University to teach this masterclass derived heavily from his recent book, "The Long Emancipation: Moving toward Black Freedom," published by @DukePress.

Rinaldo Walcott is Professor at the University at Buffalo, where he holds the Carl V. Granger Chair in Africana and American Studies. He is a writer and critic. His research is in the area of Black Diaspora Cultural Studies, gender, and sexuality with interests in nations, nationalisms, multiculturalism, policy, and education broadly defined. As an interdisciplinary Black Studies scholar, Walcott has published in a wide range of venues on everything from literature to film, to theatre to music to policy. His articles have appeared in scholarly journals, books, and popular venues like newspapers, magazines, and online media sources. He often comments on black cultural life on radio and TV.

Walcott has edited or co-edited multiple works, including Rude: Contemporary Black Canadian Cultural Criticism (Insomniac, 2000). Walcott is the author of Black Like Who: Writing Black Canada (Insomniac Press, 1997, with a second revised edition in 2003). He is also the author of Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora and Black Studies (Insomniac Press, 2016) and co-author of Black Life: Post-BLM and the Struggle for Freedom (Arbeiter Ring, 2019). In 2021, Walcott published The Long Emancipation: Moving Towards Freedom (Duke University Press) and On Property: Policing, Prisons, and the Call for Abolition (Biblioasis), which was nominated for the Heritage Toronto Book Award, longlisted for the Toronto Book Awards, a Globe and Mail Book of the Year, and listed in CBC Books Best Canadian Nonfiction of 2021.

The From Slavery to Freedom Lab supports a wide array of programs intending to examine the life and afterlives of slavery and emancipation, linking Duke University to the Global South. Through collaborative research, symposia, and community outreach, the Lab is a space to reflect collectively not only on slavery's enduring impact as an institution but think critically about how the legacies of resistance throughout the African Diaspora might help us to work toward liberation, inclusion, and social justice in the present.