WSC Lecture Series

February 9, 2009
7:00 pm

KATRINA BROWNE

Scanlon Banquet Hall Westfield State Campus

Monday, February 9, 2009 7:00pm

Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North
When: Monday, February 9, 2009
Where: Scanlon Banquet Hall
Time: 7pmIn “Traces of the Trade,” Producer/Director Katrina Browne tells the story of her forefathers, the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. Given the myth that the South is solely responsible for slavery, viewers will be surprised to learn that Browne?s ancestors were Northerners. The film follows Browne and nine fellow family members on a remarkable journey which brings them face-to-face with the history and legacy of New England?s hidden enterprise.

Katrina Browne is the seventh generation descendant of Mark Anthony DeWolf, the family’s first slave trader. Before launching this film and family process in 1999, Ms. Browne served as Outreach Planning Coordinator for the film adaptation of Anna Deavere Smith’s critically acclaimed play about the LA riots, Twilight: Los Angeles. She consulted with race relations and media experts to plan a national outreach campaign to use the PBS broadcast and video distribution as the basis for community dialogue on race, ethnicity and equity. She came to that work and filmmaking from writing a Masters thesis comparing the role that Greek tragedies played in civic life in ancient Greece to the untapped potential of film to catalyze civic dialogue today. She wrote this thesis while earning a Masters in Theology at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. Prior to her graduate studies, she worked as a senior staff person at Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program now operating in 15 cities that she co-founded in 1991 in Washington, DC to recruit more young people and people of color into nonprofit careers. She held responsibilities in national start-up, site program development, evaluation and fundraising. She has a B.A. from Princeton University, where she studied cultural anthropology with a focus on oral history, and wrote a senior thesis on France?s role in the Holocaust.

More information and press photos are available at http://www.tracesofthetrade.org/.