Guest Lecture Volker Depkat (University of Regensburg)

“Approaching Harriet Tubman: The Difficulties of Writing Her Biography”

Recently, U.S. President Joe Biden has accelerated the efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the twenty-dollar bill, which so far is featuring a portrait of Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States. While this development has raised a new interest in the life and times of Harriet Tubman, writing her biography is no easy task. Born a slave, and then, as a fugitive slave, active in the abolitionist movement, involving herself in the practical work of the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman has not left a broad trace of life writing documents from which to write a biography. In his talk, Volker Depkat will share some preliminary reflections on how to approach Harriet Tubman's life and thereby give the audience a glimpse into his new book project - a one-volume biography of Harriet Tubman written for a German-speaking audience.

Volker Depkat is a trained historian and professor of American Studies at the University of Regensburg. In his work he focuses on the history of the United States from the colonial period to today in national, continental and European-American perspective. He has also done major work on the theory and practice of biography and autobiography, and he is interested in the visual dimensions of U.S. political culture. His most recent publication is American Exceptionalism (Rowman&Littlefield 2021).

Poster