Events Archive
Brazilian histories of indigenous and black slaveries provide a particularly rich source for understanding dependency categories. From the 16th century onwards, indigenous people were enslaved and subjected to forced labor and political subjugation. African slaves were brought to Brazil as early as 1530, with abolition only in 1888. During those centuries, Brazil received more than 4,000,000 Africans, over four times as many as any other American destination. In the second edition of the Conference “Current Trends in Slavery Studies in Brazil”, invited speakers will provide further characterizations of historical scholarship in Brazil, focusing on new areas of study: the relationship between Church and slavery, law and slavery, and science and slavery - including recent research on labor history, as well as a comparative approach of Brazilian and African (Angolan) history. Find the program below. To register, please click on the link under "Registration/Ticket".
Workshop "Slave Labor, Strong Asymmetric Dependency and Social Mobility in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Cuba 1820-1900" The workshop will focus on three areas (based on Research Area D "Work and Spatiality" of the BCDSS): 1) The work of slaves, former slaves as well as other people in strong asymmetrical dependencies in the world's largest sugar factories in the Cienfuegos region (before and after formal abolition); 2) Memory/Heritage of Slavery in three dimensions: people (Tomás Terry), current representation in museums, life histories and family histories in one of the sugar factories near Cienfuegos and in the town itself; 3) Historiography of slavery in Latin America and (possible) social mobility during an era of the great anti-colonial revolutions in Spanish-America and the Caribbean (1790-1902). - in person event only - Find the program below. To register, please click on the link under "Registration/Ticket".
The passage of the International Labour Organization’s Forced Labour Convention (No. 29) in 1930 was a momentous event in global labor history, signaling an ideological, if not practical, transition away from coercive labor practices like private sector forced labor and slavery. The presentation will explore how it shaped labor practices in British East Africa—accelerating the progression toward the abolition in some ways while leaving loopholes for coercion under the guise of "tradition" and Indirect Rule.
Join us for the screening of “Vagrants, Vagabonds, Immorals", a documentary directed by Nina Tedesco and Paulo Terra (Brazil 2024). The film focuses on the dictatorship period (1964-1985) but addresses the connection between the early 20th century and the present. What are the meanings of vagrancy throughout Brazilian history, at least since Abolition? Who was considered a vagrant? What are the possibilities of resistance to attempts at criminalization of vagrancy? The movie tries to answer these questions through the an intersectional lens comprising class, gender, race and sexualities, by engaging in a dialogue about these issues with four female activists: Neusa Maria Pereira, journalist and one of the founders of the Movimento Negro Unificado; Shirley Krenak, Indigenous activist of the Krenak people; Jovanna Baby, founder of the organized movement of transgender people in Brazil; and Nataraj Trinta, historian and organizer of the Slut Walk in Rio de Janeiro. Open to all!
Limited seats available. Therefore, we operate a first come, first serve policy. This is an in person event. For more information please see the programme attached.
Join Jean Pfaelzer for the reading and discussion of her book "California, A Slave State" with Damian Pargas (Professor of the History and Culture of North America), moderated by Luvena Kopp (BCDSS). "California, A Slave State" breaks with the common perception of California as a place of endless sunshine, long coastlines, and rich harvests. It does so by exposing the multifold ways in which different forms of slavery and dependency were – and continue to be – constitutive of a state that is one of the largest economies in the world. In an accessible and poetic language that neither simplifies nor euphemizes this history and its brutality, Pfaelzer uncovers the co-existence of traditional and new systems of bondage in a land shaped by the genocide, indenture, and rape of Native Americans, the coerced labor of captive Alaska Natives, African American enslaved labor, the prostitution of Chinese girls, the unpaid labor of convicts, and ecological exploitation.
Join us on 25 March, 2025 for the screening of 'Matses Muxan Akadakit', a captivating movie about the Matis tattoo celebration directed by the indigenous Matis people. The first training courses for Matis filmmakers began in 2015 through audiovisual workshops organized by the Manaus Indian Museum and the Indigenous Work Centre (CTI). On that occasion, several young people were chosen by the dadasibo (the elders) to represent their people through this art. In 2018, the Matis filmmakers made several short films about the cultural importance of the tedinte (the blowgun). The film about the tattoo festival represents a new stage in the training process of these young filmmakers. It was entirely filmed and documented by them, who decided to sign it as a collective work, directed by the “Matis people”. The screening will be followed by a public discussion with the film directors. To register, please send an email to Taynã Tagliati by 21 March.
"Nachorious: The Nach Gyal as Post Indenture Caribbean Feminist Jouvay Mas" This mas commemorates 180 years of the Indian ‘nautch girl’ – dancer, courtesan, tawa’if, devadasi, widow, bazaar woman, and rand or randi prostitute or sex worker – escaping British imperialism, dispossession, criminalization, evangelism, political punishment and impoverishment through the journey of indenture. Stereotyped as notoriously immoral and sexually loose, the indentured Indian woman was considered a threat to the system itself. Remembered through the character of the nach gyal, Nachorious, she still dances in the spirit of freedom and resistance. This Jouvay mas is made with indenture records from 1867, text from Mahadai Das poetry and scholarship on the nautch girl, a nach gyal figure whose spinning in the air will be a dance of life, and ghungroos to sonically memorialize this history as it became ours in the Caribbean. To register, please go to the link below.
Christian missionaries pressured women in colonial contact zones to dress more ‘appropriately’ according to European understandings of Christian modesty. At the same time, access to new material goods was one of the attractions to convert. New converts and missionaries actively negotiated the re-composition of local and European fashion styles and, related to this, new forms of body and gender norms and identities. The recomposed forms of dress evolved constantly, gradually acquiring the status of ‘traditional’ dress and becoming materialisations of cultural identity and belonging. Yet, against the backdrop of postcolonial critique and the latest decolonization movements worldwide, the perception of these on-going fashions is currently shifting and being questioned as part of colonial legacies. Given these historical processes, how can we rethink dress and fashion not only as cultural expressions but also as archives of lived experiences, contestations, and resistances?
Tuli Mekondjo’s performance "Saara Omulaule/Black Saara" (2023) was improvised & inspired by Kari Miettinen’s book "On the Way to Whiteness – Christianization, Conflict, and Change in Colonial Owamboland, 1910-1965". The Finnish Sunday school song about “Black Saara – the little Negro girl” prompted a visceral response and an avenue of questioning for Mekondjo. She asks: “What made my ancestors (Aawambo people) convert to Christianity during the period 1910-1965?” The artwork evokes the need for ritual practices on living bodies as an attempt to awaken their souls from spiritual death in order to connect to our ancestors. This practice insists on the imperative performative action carried forward by ancestors, whose remains are still kept in the bondage of colonially created museums and missionary-made cemeteries. Mekondjo’s use of food, ritual and medicinal items to install the performance video are a way to connect ancestral spirits with the digital manifestation. PW: olukonda
Resilience has been defined by the American Psychological Association as "the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility to external and internal demands." (Kirmayer et al, 2007). This public talk will share insights from research on the history of childhood in plantation societies in the eighteenth century. Children and young adults in plantation societies in the Caribbean routinely experienced and witnessed traumatizing levels of violence as they were employed in industrial working conditions. Less well-documented by historians are the strategies developed in slave societies to respond to these adverse conditions. How did enslaved children navigate the traumatizing social and physical environment of the plantation, and what outcomes emerged after slavery was abolished? Finally, what lessons can we take away from this very challenging chapter in modern history?
One of the largest libraries on ancient slavery in the world with its rich holdings has moved from the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature to the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies. Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature has a long standing tradition of research on slavery in the ancient Mediterranean. More than forty volumes were published on numerous facets of the subject. In addition, a comprehensive encyclopaedia on ancient slavery was compiled by researchers from all over the world. Over the course of sixty years, the prolific research output at the Mainz Academy had led to the formation of this special and comprehensive library. It can be considered one of the largest libraries on ancient slavery in the world. To celebrate the opening of the library, we are inviting you to join our LIBRARY LAUNCH on Wednesday, 18 January, 2023, from 16:15-19:00 CET at Heussallee 16-19, 53111 Bonn. The event will be held in German. All welcome!
On February 13, 2023, Dr. Viola Müller will represent the BCDSS at the Kinderuni, where she will give a lecture on the History of Sugar. Abstract: Sugar is in chocolate, cola, gummy bears, and adults use it to sweeten their coffee. It also hides in yogurt, tomato sauce, and chips. Sugar is everywhere. But has it always been around? Where does it come from? Did it always look the same? Who made it in the past, and who is making it today? Dive into the history of sugar!
Join us for the book launch of Prof. Dr. Christoph Witzenrath's latest publication "The Russian Empire, Slaving and Liberation, 1480-1725", followed by a discussion with Prof. Dr. Martin Aust regarding the book's content. The De Gruyter book series of the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies holds publications that examine different phenomena of slavery and other forms of strong asymmetrical dependencies in societies. The series follows the BCDSS research agenda in going beyond the dichotomy of slavery versus freedom. It proposes a new key concept, strong asymmetrical dependency, which covers all forms of bondage across time and space. This includes debt bondage, convict labor, tributary labor, servitude, serfdom, and domestic work, as well as forms of wage labor and various types of patronage. To register, please send a mail to events@dependency.uni-bonn.de.
This week, Stephan Conermann is looking forward to a lively general discussion of labor-related asymmetrical dependencies and mobility. Research Area D explores workers’ practices for coping with dependency, for reducing the degree of coercion and for expanding their own autonomy. By looking at (a) individual and collective everyday practices, (b) organizations, (c) relationships with institutions (e.g. the use of laws and norms), and (d) anti-systemic practices, Research Area D will make it possible to map dependency on an alternative scale, between autonomy and coercion, and to increase the awareness of the dependents’ scope of action and their options for social mobility. Against this backdrop, the two attached texts will be discussed.
The International Workshop on Romani Asymmetrical Dependencies is dedicated to exploring asymmetrical relations and understanding co-dependencies between Romani populations and host societies within European socio-political context, in the long period between the 14th century and present day. In utilizing the formula ‘Romani Asymmetrical Dependencies’, the workshop intends to examine (in)effective mechanisms of social incorporation of the Roma, with a special interest and attention to the assessment and interpretation of their influence in local cultures as well as their role in the formation of collective identities (social, religious, political, national). Key topics of this event concern the societal, occupational and symbolic circumstances which have shaped the experiences of one of the oldest transnational minorities in the continent.
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.
"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," Simone de Beauvoir argues in her famous book The Second Sex, published in 1949. This has come as no surprise to historians since the 1990s, as women's and gender studies have identified numerous examples that argue against historically defined, biological gender roles. In this light, we ask what historically characterized a man or a woman and how were gender identities defined, for which there are long abbreviations today? What definitions and ideas of ‘woman’ and ‘man’ were there in the first place? And: Did this broad variance in gender identities also exist in historical and transcultural comparison? The perhaps surprising answer is: Of course! You will learn more about this with the help of three illustrative contributions on Europe and Asia by researchers from the Bonn Centre for Dependency and Slavery Studies. A short series of three presentations will be held in German and English.
The next reading and discussion will feature Anne Haeming, the author of 'Der gesammelte Joest: Biografie eines Ethnologen,' published by Matthes & Seitz in 2023. Join Pia Wiegmink and Jennifer Leetsch on 15 February 2024 as they query the author on the creative processes involved in writing about Wilhelm Joest, a nineteenth-century German ethnographer and traveller; the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne traces its origins to his private collection of over 3,500 objects. Please note that this an onsite event. However, for remote attendees we are offering a Zoom streaming (with microphones disabled). See below for the link. The discussion will be held in English.
In-person event. Please note that all talks are based on papers that have been pre-circulated to speakers. Please register by 15 April via Email to: events@dependency.uni-bonn.de This colloquium examines how and why segregation has been used as a tool for constructing and policing gender boundaries, at the intersection with race, age, status, class, functionality, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, nationality and other historical ideas of human identity and categorization. Segregation is the physical, cultural, or legal separation of groups on the basis of self- or external demarcations of difference and can be observed in many different human societies of the past. This colloquium discusses segregation across time and space as both a framework of control through imposing binary and as an individual coping mechanism and a strategy of subversion.
"Enslaved Females in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century North America: Examining the Fugitive Slave Archive" Through an examination of the fugitive slave archive and other sources, this lecture seeks to fill some of the scholarly gaps on the experiences of enslaved females of African descent in Canada. More specifically, it will offer some distinctions between the lives and experiences of enslaved females in slave minority (temperate) and slave majority (tropical) sites in the British transatlantic world.
This workshop aims to shed light on the underlying factors that reinforce the perpetuation of modern-day slavery in Nigeria, with a particular focus on the dynamics of asymmetrical dependency. The analysis begins by examining the historical and socioeconomic antecedents that predispose Nigeria to other forms dependency. These analytical categories such as poverty, corruption, weak governance, and socio-cultural practices have created an environment conducive to the exploitation and enslavement of individuals, particularly women, children, and the less privileged. The complex web of asymmetrical relations and diverse processes of enslavement are reproduced by institutions, beliefs, values and practices that maintain and enforce coercive relationships. The workshop will bring together renowned scholars and PhD students working in the field of asymmetrical dependency to discuss the historical, socioeconomic, and power dynamics at play.
Continuing our commitment to thought-provoking cinema and dialogue, we kick off our 2024 series with an exclusive preview of the Afrika Film Festival Köln, due this September. We are lucky to be able to feature a pre-launch Screening & Discussion of five Festival films: LIONS by Beru Tessema (2022) OUSMANE by Jorge Camarotti (2021) P.D.O. (PROTECTED DESIGNATION OF ORIGIN) by Sammy Sidali (2021) FLOWERS by Dumas Haddad (2022) SÈT LAM by Vincent Fontano (2023) Join us for our post-screening talk and get-together with BCDSS members: Malik Ade, Mary Aderonke Afolabi-Adelou and Luvena Kopp (moderation) Please register by 2nd May, noon, via: registration@dependency.uni-bonn.de
The BCDSS invites all interested to this Bilingual International Colloquium. Participants will discuss the multiple ways in which written, visual, audiovisual archives and, of course, art that emanate from the contexts of imperial, slave and colonial expansion, can not only be the object of postcolonial litigation, both academically and politically, but they are also, paradoxically, devices for the construction of new dialogues between academia, society and the State and its public policies in order to imagine actions built collectively with communities, public and private sectors, through the use of archives as exceptional primary sources for the study of African, African American, Latin American, Asian and African societies even European ones for the sake of their signification, appreciation and dissemination.
"Der Müll bleibt. Müssen wir wirklich unaufhörlich natürliche Ressourcen in Konsumgüter umwandeln, die dann schnell entsorgt werden, um Platz für neue Produkte zu schaffen?" Wir freuen uns, Prof. Ulbe Bosma vom International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam wieder bei uns in Bonn begrüßen zu dürfen, nachdem er im letzten Jahr einige Monate bei uns am BCDSS zu Gast war. Alle sind herzlich willkommen. Eintritt ist frei! Bitte melden Sie sich über den Link zur VHS Bonn an (siehe unten). Der Vortrag findet auf Deutsch statt.
How did elite Arab-Muslim households treat unfree women from 600 to 800 CE? Examining mawlayāt, servile women who were not technically enslaved, this talk examines their scarcity, domestic roles, and social networks. It cautions against uncritical reading of sources, which often convey biased messages. Mawlayāt offer insight into power dynamics in early Islamic society, occupying an intermediate position between enslaved and free.
With Sara Eriksson, Sarah Zimmerman, and Natalie Joy, three of this year's BCDSS Fellows will present their personal research projects at the Dies Academicus on 15 May 2024. They will provide interesting insights into their projects and discuss slavery and abolition in different temporal and geographical contexts. Sara Eriksson: "How to do an Archeology of Slavery: A Case Study from Ancient Greece" Prof. Dr. Sarah Zimmerman: "Gender, Slavery, and World Heritage on Gorée Island (Senegal)" Prof. Dr. Natalie Joy: "The Indian’s Cause: Native Americans and the American Antislavery Movement"
This workshop explores the intersection of archaeology and genetics, the power and complexities of archaeogenetics, a field that's reshaping our understanding of the past, using ancient and modern DNA to understand migration, societal structures, and power dynamics in history.
This workshop traces alternative Maroon worlds and worldviews along two specific lines of inquiry, ecology and imagination. Convening scholars from across disciplines (including geography, archaeology, anthropology, literary history and sound studies), we will probe the different environmental and cultural contexts of Marronage. Our goal is to engage with Marronage as an ecological, political and creative practice, underlining how Black ways of engaging with the environment provide a conceptual and practical reorientation to anthropogenic climate change.
In this roundtable, a curator, an artist, and several researchers from the BCDSS will talk about visuality and dependency. It wants to explore the various ways in which visual cultures relate to ideas, institutions, and practices of bondage and their remembrance.
How were the lives of indigenous children who worked as domestic servants in colonial Lima shaped by their roles in their masters' households? This talk explores how these domestic environments influenced the social positions of these migrant children through relationships ranging from exploitation to affection. It examines gender differences in their treatment and how these shaped their adult integration into colonial society. The discussion concludes with a comparison to modern child domestic servants, analyzing how dependency, exploitation, and affection have evolved in today's so-called democratic society.
We are carrying on with the "WHO'S GOT THE POWER?" series in cooperation with Förderverein Filmkultur at Brotfabrik, Bonn! Our second film this year, THE EMPTY GRAVE (original: 'DAS LEERE GRAB'), a German-Tanzanian co-production by Agnes Lisa Wegner and Cece Mlay, was launched at the Berlinale Film Festival earlier this year. It addresses the legacy of the German colonial rule in Tanzania: the search for the physical remains of family members, the intergenerational trauma, the quest for justice, the question of any future coexistence. Everyone is warmly welcome to join us for the post-screening talk and reception with drinks and fingerfood in the informal setting of Studio 5. On the panel representing the BCDSS: Mary Aderonke Afolabi-Adeolu, PhD Researcher Boluwatife Akinro, PhD Researcher Dr. Mercy Mashingaidze, Postdoctoral Researcher & Lecturer
This conference "Romani Feminisms: Intersectionality in the Context of Dependencies" aims to support and elevate the work of Romani women feminists, breaking the barriers that confine Romani feminisms to the periphery of mainstream spaces. The insights and outcomes from the conference will be disseminated by the Romnja Feminist Library, ensuring a broader impact and continued dialogue on these critical issues.
This workshop offers the opportunity to explore theoretical approaches to intersectionality and their applications in slavery and dependency studies. Guided by four renowned experts in the fields of anthropology (Laurie A. Wilkie, UK Berkeley), theology (Keri L. Day, Princeton), sociology (Zine Magubane, Boston College), and history (Karen Graubart, University of Notre Dame), we will examine how slavery and dependency studies might benefit from a greater emphasis on intersectionality, and how intersectionality theory might profit from research on asymmetrical dependencies. How might the comparative approach employed by researchers at the BCDSS complement classic legal and sociological conceptions of intersectionality that follow along the lines of race, gender, and class? How might both theoretical frameworks be strengthened by a greater emphasis on questions of sexuality, gender identity beyond the binary, (dis)ability, or religious experience in modern and pre-modern societies?
In his talk "Intersectionality and Asymmetrical Dependencies: Theoretical Explorations and Case Studies in Religion" in the Gender Group Colloquium at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), David B. Smith will explore new possibilities for deploying intersectionality theory in asymmetrical dependency research (ADr).
In light of recent conceptual discussions on intersectionality and (im)mobility in Forced Migration Studies, the micro-sociology and embodiment of violence in Peace and Conflict Studies as well as precarity and strong asymmetrical dependencies in Dependency and Slavery Studies, the workshop invites selected scholars from these interlinked fields to jointly reflect on the intersections between gender, violence and dependencies.
This workshop is organised in honour of two medieval historians – Alheydis Plassmann and Björn Weiler – who spent their careers championing comparative approaches to the political culture of high medieval Europe (c. 1000-1300). Compared to earlier centuries, historians tend to remain in their own national academic ‘sub-tribes’ for this part of the Middle Ages, a consequence of the sheer variety and amount of evidence that scholars have access to from the turn of the millennium, but also of a legacy of national historical narratives, inherited from the nineteenth century, concerned with the development of the nation state. The workshop will aim to honour the legacy of these two historians by bringing together established and early-career scholars to consider how we can further our understanding of the relationship between power and dependency in medieval politics beyond a national framework.
The historiography of the Kingdom of Kongo has long emphasized the profound political transformations following the Kongolese Civil War, marked by fragmentation, factional violence, and the expansion of enslavement in response to Atlantic demands. Central to this narrative is the rise of a class of oligarchs, or “entrepreneurial nobles,” who mobilized political titles and discourses of ancestry to assert their influence as local power brokers and intermediaries in the trans-Atlantic trade of goods and enslaved persons. In this presentation, I discuss how Kongolese oligarchs reshaped the vocabulary of slavery, actively participating in the renewal of Atlantic slavery in the late 18th and 19th centuries. This linguistic transformation underpinned a discourse that increasingly divorced the practice of enslavement from its previous moral constraints, embedding these strategies within the broader political and economic contexts that drove the intensification of slavery in the S.A.
Bridging Worlds: Exploring the Intersection of Heritage Studies and ArchaeoSciences For two days, more than 15 contributions from 30 researchers worldwide will explore the fascinating and complex intersection of Natural Sciences and Heritage Studies. What does the future hold for these fields? What obstacles must we address? How can we achieve our goals?