Clark Art Lecture on Justice, Property and Punishment in 18th Century Qubec

07:58AM / Wednesday, February 04, 2026Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Tuesday, Feb. 10 at 5:30 pm, the Clark Art Institutes Research and Academic Program hosts a talk by Charmaine Nelson (UMass Amherst / Clark/Oakley Humanities Fellow) exploring how transatlantic slavery was grounded in violence and systems of control imposed by enslavers and their surrogates in eighteenth-century Montreal Quebec, Canada.

The talk takes place in the Manton Research Center auditorium.

In her talk, Nelson draws from the extant business records of eighteenth-century Montreal sheriff Edward William Gray, who worked to sustain and protect the interests of white enslavers such as the Quebec City printers William Brown and Thomas Gilmore. This case study offers a lens through which to better understand the broader context of the individual at the center of Nelson's larger research project: an African-born enslaved man known as Joe. Enslaved by Brown and Gilmore and forced to work in their printing office, Joe was named in six fugitive slave advertisements issued in Quebec between 1777 and 1786. Gray's correspondence with Brown and Gilmore reveals his efforts to uphold the enslavers' claims to their "human property."

Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524. A 5 pm reception in the Manton Research Center reading room precedes the event.

Tags: Clark Art,

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Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
07:00AM / Saturday, September 12, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.

"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.

"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."

Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.

The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.

"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.

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