Led by 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock history professors Nathan Marvin and Katrina Yeaw, the program includes visits to Paris and Marseille in France and Rabat, Fes, and Marrakech in Morocco. Students will examine the history and legacies of European colonialism in France and North Africa, as well as the enduring connections between the two regions. The program highlights how historical forces continue to shape contemporary debates over identity, migration, and memory across the Mediterranean.

Students will connect classroom readings to lived experience through museum visits, guided tours, and on-site seminars.  On-site learning in historic neighborhoods, coastal ports, and medinas will help students engage directly with the places where history unfolded.

For those interested in deepening their knowledge before departure, the course Modern Empires in the Mediterranean will be offered, as HIST 48903, during the first seven weeks of the spring semester. Enrollment is encouraged but not required for participation in the study abroad program.

A program fee covers airfare, lodging, ground transportation, guided activities, and group meals. Students are responsible for tuition, passport fees, personal spending money, and some meals. The full program cost is $6,885 per participant, but each participant receives a $3,500 scholarship from Middle East Studies, reducing the student cost to $2,634鈥�$3,384 (plus Summer II tuition).

Dates to Remember

• Jan. 28, 2026, application deadline
• Feb. 11, 2026, first payment due
• April 2026, pre-departure orientation

Learn more about the or contact Nathan Marvin at nemarvin@ualr.edu or Katrina Yeaw at kyeaw@ualr.edu.

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The ACLS awarded Marvin a 2024 Project Development Grant. They are designed to support scholars in teaching-intensive faculty roles whose research is poised to make important contributions to knowledge in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.

“ACLS is committed to expanding opportunities for faculty with significant teaching responsibilities to pursue their research agendas,” said John Paul Christy, ACLS senior director of US Programs. “Project Development Grants recognize exceptional scholarship while offering flexible support to meet the specific needs of each awardee’s project.”

Marvin鈥檚 research project is entitled, “Bodies for the Care of Souls: Slavery and the Colonial Clergy in the French Empire, 1764-1848.” He will use the grant to travel to France in the fall to conduct research of archives related to the Catholic Church鈥檚 history in the Caribbean Sea.

鈥淚 am hoping to write the first historical overview of slavery as practiced by Catholic orders and congregations in the French colonial empire,鈥� Marvin said. 鈥淭o take just one snapshot in time, according to my research, over 3,000 men, women, and children lived on properties owned or managed by corporate entities of the Catholic Church across France鈥檚 global empire at the end of the 18th century.鈥�

Marvin was one of 15 grant recipients representing a large range of institutions and fields of humanistic inquiry, including anthropology, ethnic studies, history, languages and literature, musicology, philosophy, religious studies, and sociology.

Marvin has been researching this topic for more than a decade, working to gather information about the enslaved people who built and labored in Church-run mission stations, schools, hospitals, and plantations across the French Colonial Empire.

鈥淭heir labor facilitated and sustained French colonial expansion,鈥� Marvin said. 鈥淚n the French empire, the map of slaveholding by Catholic clergy is truly global, extending from Nova Scotia to New Orleans, the Caribbean, French Guiana, and the Indian Ocean.鈥�

Additionally, the book aims to center the lives of enslaved people and to reconstruct their families and lived experiences through a critical reading of the records kept by the clergy and other state entities.

鈥淪ome of these men and women left behind amazing stories of resilience and resistance,鈥� Marvin said.

One of these stories is about a man named Amand, who was a slave living on a church-owned plantation at the beginning of the French Revolution on Reunion Island.

鈥淎mand refused to give up his pew at Mass for a white parishioner. For this act of bravery, he was arrested and beaten by police,鈥� Marvin said. 鈥淭hen there is George Biassou. Along with his mother Diana, he spent much of his life as enslaved property of a group of priests who ran a hospital in colonial Haiti. Both played crucial leadership roles in the Haitian Revolution, the largest slave revolt in history.

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The exhibition, 鈥淪lavery and Freedom: Journeys Across Time and Space,鈥� will open on Friday, May 3, with a reception from 4:30-6 p.m. at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Downtown, 333 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock. Separated by decades and thousands of miles, the exhibition shows how Abby Guy and Furcy Madeleine used the legal system to escape slavery.

The exhibit will be on display at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Downtown through Oct. 31. People may walk in to see the exhibit from 1-4 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Visitors may also email downtown@ualr.edu to schedule an individual or group visit.

The grant鈥檚 recipients are Dr. Marta Cieslak, director of 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Downtown, and Dr. Nathan Marvin, assistant professor of history and humanities scholar on 鈥淪lavery and Freedom.鈥� Emily Housdan, programming and administrative assistant at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, is also on the grant team. Marvin taught a special topics history course during the fall 2023 semester, where 11 students conducted research and developed materials that will be presented as part of the exhibit.

The inspiration for this project is an existing traveling exhibit, 鈥�,鈥� created by the Mus茅e de Vill猫le in R茅union Island, France. The exhibit explores the life of Furcy Madeleine, an enslaved man who in 1817 launched his freedom suit in the French colony of Isle Bourbon (today鈥檚 R茅union Island), a legal case that wasn鈥檛 resolved until 28 years later.

鈥淭he 鈥楽lavery and Freedom鈥� exhibit will build upon Madeleine鈥檚 story,鈥� Cieslak said. 鈥淚t will feature panels from the Furcy Madeleine original exhibit and new panels that will add a comparative context of slavery and freedom in Arkansas and the United States. This is the first time that Furcy Madeleine鈥檚 exhibit will be displayed in the United States. The Arkansas panels in the exhibit will focus on the story of Abby Guy.鈥�

Guy, who by some accounts lived as a free person until a man named William Daniel enslaved her and her children, launched her freedom suit in Arkansas in 1855. Guy v. Daniel reached the Arkansas Supreme Court twice, first in 1857 and then again in 1861.

Students in Marvin鈥檚 class learned what it takes to create a public humanities exhibit. They practiced such skills as transcribing documents, creating maps, a timeline, family trees, and text for the exhibit. They also photographed locations in southeast Arkansas important to Guy鈥檚 story. Their research contributed to the project. The team that researched, designed, and created the exhibit are Cieslak, Marvin, Housdan, and also Dr. Jess Porter, executive director of the Center for Arkansas History and Culture.

鈥淎bby Guy鈥檚 story makes this exhibit exciting from a local perspective,鈥� Marvin said. 鈥淭hey are both very well documented cases, and you really see the legal construction of race and enslavement at work through these court cases. The students loved researching the case and were very engaged in the practice of putting together content for a historical exhibit. The students produced some great work along the way.鈥�

As part of the class, students were able to examine some of the original files from the Guy v. Daniel case. The 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law Library houses some of those files, and Harry Lah, collections management librarian, and Melissa Serfass, professor of law librarianship, helped the students access the documents.

Another student who helped with the exhibition is Skylar Boone, a graphic design student from the School of Art and Design who was selected from multiple applicants to create watercolor paintings for the exhibition.

“Skylar created beautiful watercolors of the six figures central to the Guy v. Daniel case,” Cieslak said. “Her watercolors invite the audience to imagine what those six individuals looked like, and she did a terrific job.”

The exhibit explores the history and legacies of modern slavery from a comparative perspective.

鈥淲e have the story of a man from R茅union Island, and we might think that we have nothing in common with that part of the world,鈥� Cieslak said. 鈥淲hen you bring these two stories together, you see how similar they are. They are very fascinating cases, and we hope to do them justice.鈥�

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The lecture will take place April 2 in the Ottenheimer Auditorium at the Historic Arkansas Museum at 200 E. Third Street in Little Rock. Refreshments will be served at 7 p.m. and the lecture will begin at 7:30 p.m.

鈥淭he goal of this talk is to get us thinking about how we remember our 鈥楩rench鈥� heritage in Arkansas,鈥� stated Marvin. 鈥淚鈥檒l dig beneath the surface of place names and examine the stories we think we know about them: Petit Jean, Shinall Mountain, Thibault Road, Bayou Bartholomew, to name a few.鈥�

The Legend of Petit Jean, which inspired the name of a popular state park in Arkansas, follows the legend of an 18th-century French woman who disguised herself as a soldier to accompany her lover on an expedition to North America. This lecture will explore the insights that this story offers on the cultural influence of the French-colonial roots in Arkansas communities.

鈥淚 will discuss the historical figures behind the placenames, whose lives and backgrounds have largely been obscured by layers of mythmaking and selective historical commemoration,鈥� Marvin said. 鈥淚n the case of Petit Jean, in particular, I will reveal discoveries from my recent archival work in France that shed new light on the truth behind the famous legend.鈥�

Marvin鈥檚 lecture will address the ways that Arkansas鈥檚 French and Spanish colonial history impact the culture today. He hopes that exploring these topics can deepen a sense of belonging for Arkansans.

鈥淎rkansas was once an integral part of what scholars call North America鈥檚 ‘Creole Corridor,鈥� a swath of French-speaking homesteads and communities stretching from the Great Lakes to New Orleans,鈥� Marvin explained. 鈥淚t was a cosmopolitan world, composed in large part of people of mixed European and African or indigenous ancestry. The main takeaway is that a more accurate understanding of Arkansas’s past is also a more inclusive one; can understanding Arkansas’s Creole heritage help foster a more meaningful sense of place for residents of the state today.鈥�

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