Patricia Matthew Delivers Spring 2019 Gipson Lecture

Patricia Matthew, professor in the English Department, delivered the Spring 2019 Gipson Lecture at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. “’I have no master:’ Marriage and/as The Transatlantic Slave Trade” considered the rhetoric of legal and social contracts in Mansfield Park, The Woman of Colour, A Tale, and the 2015 historical drama “Belle.” The Lawrence Henry Gipson Institute for Eighteenth-Century Studies funds research projects, organizes symposia, and hosts an annual lecture. Based on her readings of the 1753 Hardwick Marriage Act and the 1772 Somerset v Stewart decision on the status of enslaved Africans in Britain, the talk was drawn from Prof. Matthew’s book-in-progress on sugar, race, and the history of the novel.