Ryan A. Quintana is the author of Making a Slave State: Political Development in Early South Carolina, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2018. Making a Slave State examined how enslaved African Americans built the state of South Carolina, in the literal sense of the word. From roads to canals, from public buildings to military fortifications, Quintana examines not only how enslaved people were central to producing the state’s infrastructure and early governing practices, but also how they claimed these same spaces for themselves. Dr. Quintana is associate professor of history at Wellesley College. He specializes in race, slavery, space, and the state in the late colonial and early national eras. Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland.

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