Dr. Tara Bynum, ‘Obour Tanner Makes an Archive: Or, How to Remember Your Famous (and Deceased) 18th-Century Friend, Phillis Wheatley’

In this episode of the Cambridge American History Seminar Podcast, we’re joined by Dr Tara Bynum, Associate Professor of English & African American Studies at the University of Iowa. 

She discusses a paper related to her book project, titled: ‘Obour Tanner Makes an Archive: Or, How to Remember Your Famous (and Deceased) 18th-Century Friend, Phillis Wheatley.’

Dr. Bynum’s research centres on a remarkable set of letters written between 1772 and 1779 by two eighteenth-century enslaved Black women: Phillis Wheatley and her close friend, Obour Tanner. 

Bynum’s work reveals how personal artifacts like these can reshape the way we think about archives. She invites engagement with these letters not just as collections of facts, but as spaces of grief, memory, and imagination. 

Co-Hosts:

Megan Renoir, PhD Candidate at Cambridge University. Megan researches Indigenous sovereignty and land conflict. 

Shea Hendry, PhD Candidate at Cambridge University. Shea’s research examines the children of loyalist refugees who embodied both American citizenship and British subjecthood, concurrently and consecutively, throughout the Early National Period.  

Editing, production and cover art by Daisy Semmler.

Thanks for listening. 

Timestamps: 

(00:00) Introduction

(01:40) Dr. Bynum’s work

(03:40) The Historical Actors

(05:13) Placing This Story within Broader Research

(06:43) Methodology

(11:08) The Archive

(18:59) The Contents of the Letters

(23:24) Interpretation, and Contending with the “Happy Slave” Narrative

(28:56) How Teaching Reveals Nuance

(33:25) Pancakes and Cultural Crisis

(35:40) Accessing Wheatley and Tanner’s Relationship in their Correspondence

(40:33) Animating Lessons from Dr. Bynum’s Work