First Fridays is a faculty colloquium that highlights the work of one of our faculty members each month. Attend to engage fully in the intellectual life of our campus community.

The title of this talk is "Pirates or Corsairs, Captives or Slaves? Language and Identity in Barbary Captivity Narratives."

What’s in a word? What difference does it make if someone is labeled a “pirate,” “buccaneer,” or “corsair”? A “captive” or a “slave”? If a captive is “ransomed” or “redeemed”?

From the 16th through the 18th centuries, hundreds of people were taken captive in the Mediterranean and held for ransom or forced labor. Dozens of those captives wrote accounts of their ordeals. This session will explore the historical context of these narratives and the linguistic choices their authors made, examining the political and personal weight of language.