Marcus Redikerauthor, professor and chair of the history department at the University of Pittsburghwill continue this years Festival of Ideasat 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 31, inWest Virginia University’sMountainlair Gluck Theatre.

His speech,The Floating Dungeon: A History of the Slave Ship,will focus on information gathered for his latest book,”The Slave Ship: A Human History.”The event is free and open to the public.

In”The Slave Ship,”Rediker draws on 30 years of research in maritime archives to create an unprecedented history of these vessels and the human drama acted out on their rolling decks. He reconstructs in chilling detail the lives, deaths and terrors of captains, sailors and the enslaved aboard a”floating dungeon”trailed by sharks. Rediker restores the slave ship to its rightful place alongside the plantation as a formative institution of slaveryas a place where a profound and still haunting history of race, class and modern capitalism was made.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker said,”For all Americans and indeed all those who live in the Western world who have profited by, or suffered from, the endless brutality of the slave trade, during all its centuries and into the present, this book is homework of the most insistent order.”

Rediker’swork focuses on working people and their movements. He has looked at a variety of social justice issues, including movements against the Vietnam War, the interventions of the U.S. government in Central America in the 1980s, apartheid in South Africa, environmental destruction and all forms of exploitation and oppression based on race, class and gender.

In recent years, he has worked to win a new trial for Pennsylvania death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and to abolish capital punishment in the U.S. and throughout the world.

Rediker graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in1976. He received a master’s degree and doctorate in history from the University of Pennsylvania.

Rediker holds fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment of the Humanities and Andrew P. Mellon Foundation.

This event is co-sponsored by the WVU Center for Black Culture. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The Festival of Ideas is supported in part by the David C. Hardesty Jr. Festival of Ideas Endowment, which brings preeminent thinkers and scholars to campus.