Dr. Matthew Blake Strickland is a historian of slavery, race, and religion in the Atlantic world. He is currently working on a book manuscript that analyzes the Anglican underpinnings of race-based slavery in the British Atlantic. Missionaries living in the colonies often wrote to Church of England leadership in the metropole with claims that Black people were “uncivilized” or “brutish.” Top Anglican officials used these missionary reports, letters, and treatises to advocate for the continued enslavement of non-white people.
Dr. Strickland is also developing a website called Religion & Slavery in which students and scholars can explore the multitude of connections between the diverse religious groups and Black enslavement in the Atlantic region. The site will provide essays detailing the lived religions of enslaved people, the religious justifications for enslavement by European Christian and Jewish groups, and act as a repository for primary sources on this topic. He hopes the website will be active by 2023.
Dr. Strickland returns to UF with a variety of teaching and research experience. He has taught college-level courses in face-to-face settings as well as online. Furthermore, he taught high school social studies during the pandemic. His research has been published in the Journal of Caribbean History.