Events - Other
Karolyne M. Moreira, “Incarnated spirits: ’sorcery’, mutual dependencies and normative production in southern Mozambique (1890–1940)”: In this talk, Karolyne focuses on presenting the normativity of sorcery as a language of power. She seeks to demonstrate how Portuguese colonial policies around ‘sorcery’ and local social discourses around belief in spells both resulted in the establishment of mutual, yet deeply asymmetrical, dependencies. Mauro Manhanguele, “Language, power and mutual dependencies: Interpreters and justice administration in Colonial Mozambique, 1895-1974”: This study seeks to understand the role played by African interpreters in the colonial administration and justice system. By focusing on the case of Mozambique, it assumes that these agents not only participated in the creation of colonial law but also produced it.
Join us for this year’s Wissenschaftsfestival, the University of Bonn's Science Festival! With a diverse program for all ages, the university's vice-rectorates, six transdisciplinary research areas, and excellence clusters will showcase their work. All students, university members, and citizens of the region are invited to come together and enjoy this day while experiencing science up close! In addition to an exciting stage program, there will be a family science rally, and many exciting hands-on activities for all age groups. The BCDSS will offer a “pop-up lesson” on child labor, its history and engaging activities like weaving against the clock. We look forward to seeing you, your families, and friends!
This week, our fellow Matthew Dziennik is looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on his project “Soldiers, Slavery, and Dependence in West Africa, c. 1750‒1850.” Between c. 1750 and c. 1850, British authority in West Africa and the wider Atlantic World rested on the labor of enslaved African soldiers. This presentation analyzes British efforts to recruit manpower as a window into slavery, dependence, and imperialism in the Age of Revolutions. It reveals the often counterintuitive ways in which assumptions about slavery and dependence were inverted by efforts to recruit and deploy soldiers.
Join the panel discussion "Colonial Traces in Bonn - the Long Road to a New Culture of Remembrance?" organized by Fernuni Hagen. Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann will be speaking on behalf of the BCDSS and University of Bonn. The event will be held in German. What is colonial in the city of Bonn? Which traces can still be found today, how are they dealt with in society, politics, media and research? Especially recently, civil society, the university and municipal institutions have formulated more advanced approaches and debates that challenge familiar images of history. Does this only add to the generally known urban history or does it lay a completely new, postcolonial foundation for an inclusive culture of memory? Please register by July 11, 2023 at: campus.bonn@fernuni-hagen.de
Join us on Monday, October 30, 2023, at 18:15 CET for a reading and discussion evening with Mareice Kaiser, BCDSS Principal Investigator Karoline Noack and Jean-Pierre Schneider, Director of Caritas Bonn, about the dependency relationships behind the unjust distribution of money and how this could be overcome. The event is a cooperation between the BCDSS and the Adult Education Center (VHS) Bonn.
This week, our fellow Justin Roberts is looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on his project “Fragile Empire: Slavery in the Early English Tropics, 1645-1720.” As a framework, the global tropics offers us a new way of thinking about the origins of slavery in the English empire. The English took advantage of a wide variety of bondage systems to support their commercial and territorial expansion in the global tropics. By the 1680s, one variant of racial slavery had outcompeted other forms of bondage within the empire. It was marked by its permanence, its heritability, its impermeable boundaries, and its distinct brutality. It was associated with the tropical zone. The dominance of this genus of bondage shaped the ongoing threats of insurrection and invasion in England’s expanding tropical empire.
This week, our fellow Thiago Sapede is looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on his project "The muleke (“Church slaves”) in the 18th and 19th Centuries Kingdom of Kongo”. This presentation analyzes the complex role and status of the mulekes (“Church slaves”) in 18th and 19th century Kingdom of Kongo. The mulekes played a prominent role in Kongo catholic missions, working in the catholic convents in mbanzas (towns) and following European missionaries to the voyages throughout the country. These characters will reveal interesting clues to Central African forms of slavery and their intersection with European-colonial forms of dependency. PS: Please note that the seminar will be from 13:00 - 14:30 CET instead of the usual 16:00 - 17:30 CET. Please make sure to adjust your schedule accordingly.
"Workingman's Death" is a visually stunning and emotionally resonant documentary that delves into the lives of laborers from different corners of the world. Directed by the Austrian filmmaker Michael Glawogger, the unique approach to storytelling, masterful cinematography, and commitment to capturing the essence of humanity have made "Workingman's Death" an enduring and thought-provoking piece of cinema. Glawogger takes viewers on an odyssey that exposes the harsh realities faced by laborers in five distinct locations: the coal mines of Ukraine, the sulfur mines in Indonesia, the ship-breaking yards in Pakistan, the slaughterhouses in Nigeria, and the steelworks in China. The film confronts the disturbing aspects of these workers' lives, exploring human perseverance in the face of extreme hardship. Don't miss the after-screening discussion & reception with BCDSS PhD researcher Ayesha Hussain, led by Cécile Jeblawei (BCDSS) and Sigrid Limprecht (Kino in der Brotfabrik).
This week, guest lecturer Peter Marx (University of Cologne) is looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on his project "'Unehrlich' [Insincere] and marginalized: On the precarious status of performers in the Early Modern period." The legal status of performers – actors, dancers, musicians, media performers – was highly precarious throughout the Early Modern period. Looking more closely into the field, it becomes obvious that this status reflects more general questions of freedom, social status and a field of arts that was an intrinsic part of the social fabric, yet always confined to the margins. The paper tries to sketch some outlines for future research in this field in the perspective of a connected history (Subrahmanyam).
"Tori and Lokita" depicts multiple forms of strong asymmetrical dependencies connected to migration from Africa to Europe. Two young refugees from Benin and Cameroon form a makeshift safety net for one another in the absence of blood relatives while they are facing marginalization, coerced labor, child labor, sexual exploitation, criminilization and further forms of oppression in Belgium. The film screening will start at 18:30 CET, followed by a discussion at 20:00 CET. The dicussion will be kick-started with input from BCDSS Professor Claudia Jarzebowski and PhD Researcher Boluwatife Akinro, as well as Professor Britta Hartmann and Lucas Curstädt of the Media Studies Department, University of Bonn. The discussion will be held mainly in German, however, contributions in English are welcome, and we will translate where necessary. The entire event is free of charge for everyone. Please REGISTER BY 27 September, 5 pm, via: pr@dependency.uni-bonn.de.
This week, we'll have a Fellows Block Seminar, including book and project presentations, which will also be the last one for this academic year (2022/23)! We're looking forward to the following presentations: 1) 11:00-12:00 Katja Makhotina, HHK Fellow (book presentation) Title: “Monastery and prison. Places of Confinement in Western Europe and Russia from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age”, edited by Katja Makhotina, Falk Bretschneider, Natalia Muchnik, Martin Aust. Moscow 2022 2) 12:30-13:15 Ulbe Bosma, IISH Amsterdam (project presentation) Title: “The Global South in the Age of Early Industrial Capitalism: Commodity Frontiers and Social Transformations (1816-1870)” 3) 13:30-14:15 Emmanuel Saboro, University of Cape Coast (project presentation) Title: “Sites of Memory: Visuality and Metaphors of Slavery in Ghana” decades of the twentieth century. 5) 15:15-15:30 Stephan Conermann (wrap up) For more info, check the link below.
We are very pleased that Trevor Burnard and Damian Pargas have offered to present and discuss their new books with us! Trevor Burnard, Writing the History of Global Slavery (Cambridge Elements, Cambridge University Press), forthcoming (November 2023) Damian Pargas (ed., together with Juliane Schiel), The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery throughout History (Palgrave MacMillan), June 2023 The discussion is moderated by BCDSS postdoctoral researcher Viola Müller and is followed by a reception.
Over the past five years, a project team based at the International Institute of Social History (IISH), Amsterdam has developed the ESTA Database structure in collaboration with international partners. The ESTA project has established a relational database model that is able to accommodate structural differences in source material and (existing) datasets relating to different parts of the Indian Ocean and maritime Asia region. Currently (2023), the database contains over 4,000 slave trade voyages across the maritime Asia region between roughly 1600 and 1850. The number of enslaved persons transported during these voyages range from at least 340,000–342,500 to 600,000 individuals. IISH and BCDSS are closely linked not only by their collaboration on this project but also by an international partnership. 13:30 Welcome 13:45 Launch of ESTA Database 14:30 Comments 15:00 Open Discussion and Q&A 16:30 Reception Registration required due to limited seating!
"Ecological Transition and the Dependency Trap: Challenging Old Approaches to Sovereignty". Sabrina Fernandes is a Brazilian sociologist and political economist with a PhD from Carleton University, Canada. She has researched transitions and ecology for over a decade, with expertise on Latin America. Formerly a postdoctoral fellow with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, with research appointments at the University of Vienna, Freie Universität Berlin, and University of Brasília, she has recently completed a fellowship with the Centre of Advanced Latin American Studies at the University of Guadalajara focused on the Anthropocene and the topic of sacrifice zones. She was also a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine and chief editor of Jacobin Brazil. Her books and articles cover various fields and her publications can be found in English, Portuguese, Spanish and other languages. Currently, she is Head of Research at the Alameda Institute.
Join the Facebook Live discussion and Q&A featuring the former BCDSS Bonn-Yale-Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-Fellow Dr. Frank J. Cirillo and his new LSU Press book, "The Abolitionist Civil War: Immediatists and the Struggle to Transform the Union." The presentation will take place from 2–2:30pm, followed by a 10-minute Q&A.
Join the book presentation and discussion with Dr. Jeroen Wijnendaele, postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Dr. Julia Hillner's project "Connecting Late Antiquities". This book delves into the significant political, social, economic, religious, and cultural changes that shaped a crucial region of the Roman world during the second quarter of the first millennium CE. Key features include its status as the first modern research volume on Late Antiquity's core region, a tight chronological focus on the transformation of Late Roman Italy, and a balanced exploration of topics like gender and environmental history. The volume reevaluates the pivotal transition in Late Antiquity, specifically the shift from the Roman Empire to autonomous kingdoms in Italy between 250 and 500 CE.
Join us as historian Ana Lucia Araujo discusses her latest book, 'The Gift: Exploring the Influence of Prestigious Objects in the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism' in an engaging reading and discussion session. The book explores how objects of prestige contributed to cross-cultural exchanges between Africans and Europeans during the Atlantic slave trade. Drawing on a rich set of sources in French, English, and Portuguese, as well as artifacts housed in museums across Europe and the Americas, Ana Lucia Araujo illuminates how luxury objects impacted European–African relations, and how these economic, cultural, and social interactions paved the way for the European conquest and colonization of West Africa and West Central Africa.
Professor Ulrich Berges will talk about „Der Exodus im Alten Testament. Befreiung und/oder göttliches Sklaventum?“ and discuss the ambiguity of salvation and submission, paying special attention to the slavery laws in the Old Testament.
This week, BCDSS fellow Rafaël Thiébaut is looking forward to a lively discussion and feedback on his project “Unfree Labour in the Southwest Indian Ocean (17th-19th Centuries).” This talk analyses different forms of bondage labor through the case study of the Southwestern Indian Ocean: Madagascar with Comoros & Mascarenes. Thanks to the use of quantitative and qualitative archival material, Rafaël will place the micro-histories of the individual slave in the larger context of the developments in the Modern Age, especially in relation to a European interference over time and space. This will pave the way to a better understanding of the phenomenon and make it possible to place it in a larger global context.
Don’t miss our third and last film screening this year in cooperation with Kino in der Brotfabrik: PARIS IS BURNING, a landmark documentary from 1990 by Jennie Livingston (USA). Documenting the queer “Ballroom Culture” in New York City in the 1980s, this groundbreaking movie depicts Latinx and Black queer and transgender communities. It explores their struggles with multiple forms of discrimination regarding their race, class, gender, sexual identity long before concepts such as gender fluidity or intersectionality were discussed in society. Stay on after the screening and join the conversion and get-together with free drinks/nibbles! BCDSS Professor Julia Hillner will give a short introduction on the BCDSS’ thematic year with a research focus on Gender (and Intersectionality). Förderverein Filmkultur, the Queer-Referat (AStA Uni Bonn) and BCDSS Professor Pia Wiegmink will kickstart the post-screening conversation.