The Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston welcomes Jason Young, professor of history at the University of Michigan, where he is also director of the Institute for the Humanities and Mary Fair Croushore Professor of the Humanities. His teaching and research cover 19th-century United States history, African American history and the African Diaspora. He specializes in the history of art, religion and folk culture devoting special attention to the Palmetto State. Jason Young is the author of Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry Region of Georgia and South Carolina in the Era of Slavery, an exploration into the religious and ritual practices that linked West-Central Africa with the Lowcountry region. Jason is also well known in the museum world. He co-curated Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, a touring exhibition that opened at the Metropolitan Museum (MET) of New York before traveling to other prestigious museums. He also made significant contributions to the International African American Museum here in Charleston. Young visits our campus to discuss his latest book, The Mask of Memory: White Racial Fantasy after the Civil War, published this year by the University of North Carolina Press. In this work, Young explores the role of early 20th-century white writers, artists and performers from the cultural hub of Charleston in creating and disseminating a highly sanitized view of slavery. His analysis reveals the power and persistence of these myths even today and the way historical memory and our understanding of the past are formed and distorted.