NEWS from the BCDSS
BCDSS Postdoctoral Researcher Viola Müller has just published her article "How some enslaved Black people stayed in Southern slaveholding states – and found freedom" about fugitive slaves in cities of the US South as a parallel story to the much better known Underground Railroad.
To read the full article, click here.
The deadline is extended to March 1st, 2023, to submit an abstract for the international conference on September 7–8, 2023 at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, organized by the research group The Archaeology of Dependency (ArchDepth): Resources, Power and Status Differentiation (Christian Mader, Claire Conrad, and Tamia Viteri Toledo).
Join us for the presentation and discussion of the first two monographs in our De Gruyter book series Dependency and Slavery Studies on Friday, March 3rd, at 14:00-16:00 CET.
Formerly held on Wednesdays, the new Friday Fellows and Alumni Seminars provide first hand insight into current research projects by BCDSS Fellows and Alumni. Now open to the general public, the aim is to make the Cluster’s scholarly work more visible nationally and internationally, and to promote a dialogue between our BCDSS scholars and the wider public.
The Zentrum für Religion und Gesellschaft (ZERG) will host a presentation of BCDSS member Prof. Dr. Julia Hillner's latest book.
We are very pleased to announce the launch of the Library of Ancient Slavery at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies!
The Research Article published in "Antiquity" deals with deep-time transformations of dependency and mobility plus more! It was published by BCDSS' Christian Mader, former BCDSS Heinz Heinen Fellow David G. Beresford-Jones, Matthias Lang of the Center for Digital Humanities and more colleagues of Argentina, Peru, UK and Germany.
In this issue, we shall be shedding light on research activities spanning across four continents, from field research on the pre-modern Napo culture in Ecuador to the present-day lives of Rohingya refugees on Bhasanchar Island of Bangladesh.
All of us at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies would like to express our gratitude to everyone for their commitment to and support for the Center’s work during this eventful year.
Ahead of the World Cup Final in Qatar, the BCDSS would like to draw attention an article by BCDSS doctoral researcher Anas Ansar et. al.
Our Working Papers present results from ongoing research and contribute to current scholarly debate. They are conceptualized as “work in progress”. The aim of this publishing series is to stimulate debates on the new key concept of the Cluster, strong asymmetrical dependency. They are subject to an internal peer review.
We regularly invite renowned international scholars from across the world to present their ongoing research related to asymmetrical dependency and slavery. In return we offer the possibility to publish a revised version of their lectures as part of our Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture Publications.
See what's coming up at the beginning of the year!
For the academic year of 2023/2024 the BCDSS proudly announces the Third Bonn-Yale-Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-Fellowship in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (GLC), part of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University.
Reaching out to schools forms a crucial part of our outreach activities. BCDSS members Konrad Vössing and Maja Baum, together with Peter Geiss (Didactics of History, Bonn University), developed a collection of primary sources, interpretations and didactic suggestions, designed as a practical guide for German secondary schools.
Michael Zeuske: Africa – Atlantic – America. Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa, the Atlantic, the Americas, and Europe
Join us for the screening of Salaam Bombay on November 24, 2022, at 20:00 CET!
Don't miss the after-screening talk with Sigrid Limprecht, Förderverein Filmkultur, BCDSS Professor Claudia Jarzebowski, and further members of the Cluster as well as the public!
This is the third film in our dependency-related film series cooperation "Who's Got the Power" with Förderverein Filmkultur Bonn.
The film "Salaam Bombay" by Mira Nair, India 1988, engages with varying forms of asymmetrical relationships that are forced primarily upon children and women. They are pushed to megacity by various factors but mainly by poverty. Here, the city is not just a place of arrival, it becomes a dreamscape. People initially conceive it as a place of hope; hence the allure of (push towards) the city. However, soon after their arrival, they end up bound in extreme forms of asymmetrical relationships. i.e. brothels or slums where their lives further unravel. As a social formation, like villages, the city has its underlying logic of patriarchy and casteism which deeply structure people’s lives. The movie clearly portrays how people are forced into extreme forms of asymmetrical dependencies. Money, men, and power are inextricably connected to the lives of the socially destitute and deprivations flourish, while those on the streets become interchangeable.
For the academic year of 2023/2024 the Cluster will put a thematic emphasis on Research Area E “Gender and Intersectionality”. Research Area E investigates dependencies associated with gender, sexuality, status, class, ethnicity, religion, age and other historical, anthropological, and representational aspects relevant to explaining differences among persons and human groups, both in past and present societies.
Showcasing women's fates in black-and-white photography
Together with the Frauenmuseum, we invite you to the opening of the exhibition "All they wanted was to study... The Numerus Clausus and the young women". The photo exhibition highlights young Hungarian Jewish women affected by the so-called Numerus Clausus law of 1920 and explores its impact on women's emancipation and Jewish assimilation.
Marion Gymnich and Béla Bodó will place the exhibition, which was first shown in Budapest in 2021, in the context of the cluster's dependency studies, and explain how it was adopted for the Frauenmuseum in Bonn. Visitors will then be taken on a tour of the exhibition by Judith Szapor, the curator and Associate Professor of History and Classical Studies at McGill University, Montréal.
We're delighted to announce that BCDSS Professor Claudia Jarzebowski and doctoral candidates Joseph Biggerstaff and Lisa Phongsavath, who have been awarded a fund for the German-Australian collaborative project Child Slaveries in the Early Modern World: Gender, Trauma, and Trafficking in Transcultural Perspective (1500-1800).
We're excited to share that BCDSS professor Julia Hillner has been awarded a grant by the AHRC and DFG for Connecting Late Antiquities (CLA).
We are happy to announce that Christoph Witzenrath's monograph and habilitation thesis "The Russian Empire, Slaving and Liberation, 1480–1725" was recently published by De Gruyter. It is the fourth volume of the BCDSS Book series "Dependency and Slavery Studies" and available in print and via open access.
We are tremendously pleased that the first volume of our “Dependency ad Slavery Studies” (DSS) Series was published by De Gruyter earlier this month:
Jeannine Bischoff and Stephan Conermann: Slavery and Other Forms of Strong Asymmetrical Dependencies Semantics and Lexical Fields (De Gruyter, October 3, 2022)
Download as PDF via Open Access
This series is based on BCDSS research projects and aimed at a wide professional readership, the books reflect the cluster's research methods and wide-ranging interests in history, regional studies and cultural science. Manuscripts submitted for publication in the book series undergo a double-blind peer review process. The editors of this book series are Jeannine Bischoff and Stephan Conermann.
Join us on Monday, November 7, 2022, for a reading and discussion evening with playwright NATASSA SIDERI, whose play GEFESSELT addresses the problem of debt bondage in present-day society.
Spiegel Geschichte dedicated a whole issue to "Sklaverei - Wie Menschen zur Ware wurden".
Michael Zeuske, Senior Research Professor at the BCDSS, and Rebekka von Mallinckrodt, Professor of Early Modern History at University of Bremen and member of the BCDSS International Advisory Board, contributed to the chapter on research (pp. 22 - 31).
We regularly invite renowned international scholars from across the world to present their ongoing research related to asymmetrical dependency and slavery. In return we offer the possibility to publish a revised version of their lectures as part of our Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture Publications.
See what's coming up this autumn!
Postdoctoral researcher Dr. Viola Franziska Müller's new book is out! Escape to the City examines runaways who camouflaged themselves among the free Black populations in Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, and Richmond.