Fireburn

Fireburn: Revolt, Representation, and Remembrance examines the 1878 labor revolt on St. Croix in the Danish West Indies (since 1917 the U.S. Virgin Islands) as both a historical event and a site of ongoing meaning-making. The dissertation traces how the revolt has been recorded, obscured, and reclaimed across nearly 150 years, moving through historiography, print culture, colonial archives, vernacular memory, and museum practice.

By tracing the revolt across time, media, and geography, the dissertation asserts that Fireburn is not a closed chapter of history, but a dynamic and contested event that continually influences ideas of post-emancipation colonial labor relations, conceptions of freedom, and the ways colonial legacies continue to structure them.

Rikke Lie Halberg is a historian and a LAM Scholar. Fireburn is her doctoral dissertation.