Patricia A. Matthew (NHC Fellow, 2022–23)

Fellowship Work Summary, 2022–23

Patricia A. Matthew revised three chapters of her book-in-progress, What Sugar Taught Us: Gender, Race and the Afterlives of Abolition. She also drafted the book’s introduction, made significant progress on the final chapter, and drafted the epilogue. She wrote and recorded her Wondrium lecture “Pride and Prejudice in the 21st Century” for Audible.com and reviewed Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (Netflix) for Slate. She completed significant research for her Norton Critical Edition of Mansfield Park. She gave talks at area universities: “The Margins and Radical Inclusion” (North Carolina State University, English Department) and “Attendant with Pearls: Portraiture, Abolition, and the Properties of Whiteness” (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, African, African-American, Diaspora Studies Colloquium) and delivered the 33 Earlie E. Thorpe Memorial Lecture titled “‘they ask me to remember’: Black Figuration and the Politics of Objects” at North Carolina Central University. She also gave a public talk, via Zoom, to the English Ceramic Circle in the UK titled, “Of Teapots and Sugar Bowls: The Limits of Abolitionist Sentiment.” She delivered a paper titled, “‘The Young Catechist’: Blackness, Performance, and Visual Narratives of Benevolence” at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver Canada as part of the English Department’s Literature and Legacies of Race Lecture Series. She also co-organized the interdisciplinary symposium and concert, “Abolitionism and the Arts in the Long Eighteenth Century” at Columbia University in New York City.