Political Science graduate student Jean-Marc Pruit presented a paper entitled “‘Dominus Populi’: Redefining Tyranny and Domination in the Black Atlantic,” as part of a roundtable at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA). The roundtable explored the theme of “Race and National Identity in the American Constitutional Tradition.” Pruit’s paper argued that radical abolitionists and anti-slavery activists in the Age of Revolution “redefined republican conceptions of tyranny,” suggesting that the conception of tyranny evolved from political dominance of an individual to “a social practice of private domination.” Pruit said that conference afforded him with an “exciting opportunity” to present his “original research to a constructive community of scholars” and characterized the roundtable as “a fruitful discussion of race and nationality as they relate to American constitutionalism.”
The roundtable’s topic was chaired by the department’s own Dr. Ashleen Menchaca-Bagnulo who presented her own paper exploring ways in which mythmaking about the American founding could “adjust to multi-racial democracy given the doubts of the Founders regarding the viability of such a project.” Her paper, “Myth and the Founding,” argues “for an understanding of American history as always already multi-racial and pluriethnic.”
Dr. Menchaca-Bagnulo commented that “Jean-Marc gave an impressive paper on the Black Atlantic Republican tradition and was able to hold his own with established scholars in our field.”
