Profs and Pints Online presents: “A Scholars’ Guide to The Underground Railroad,” with Richard Bell, professor of history at the University of Maryland, and Nadine Knight, associate professor of African American literature at the College of the Holy Cross.

[This talk will remain available in recorded form at the link given here for tickets and access.]

Amazon Prime’s new series The Underground Railroad is being heralded by critics as the must-see show of the summer. Based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel, the show imagines a pre-Civil War world in which fugitives from slavery ride real trains through real tunnels.

Come learn what the show gets right or wrong about the real Underground Railroad, and why it all matters, from Richard Bell, an expert on the actual Underground Railroad, and Nadine Knight, an expert on African American literature and culture as well as television and film.

Dr. Bell and Dr. Knight will examine the show’s engagement with major thematic elements like slavery, resistance, flight, and freedom. They’ll illuminate the contrasts between the series and documented history and also between the series and the novel.

Dr. Bell previously has given fantastic Profs and Pints talks offering a historian’s critical perspective of the musical Hamilton. This talk jointly delivered with him and Dr. Knight offers viewers of The Underground Railroad a front-row seat to the vibrant scholarly debate about how best to depict the freedom struggle on the small screen.

Profs & Pints Online: A Scholars’ Guide to The Underground Railroad