Nov 1 Chris Willoughby (Huntington Library) "Collected without Consent: Imperialism and Enslavement in Harvard’s Medical Museum." Co-sponsored with the Atlantic field In 1847, upon his retirement, John Collins Warren gave his entire anatomical collection to Harvard’s medical school, including a collection of racial skulls that would grow to include more than 150 objects. In this […]
Pirates which infest that coast’: Illicit Trade and Imperial Rivalry in Seventeenth-Century Western Hispaniola This presentation considers the illicit trade of tobacco and other goods from Western Hispaniola. French, Dutch, and English ships came from the 1560s to trade with the diverse groups living there—Indigenous, Spanish, and African. In response, in 1605-6, western and northwestern […]
Beginning in the seventeenth-century, members of the Carmelite order adopted two ancient Ethiopian saints, Efigenia and Elesban. While their interest in ancient saints was tied to the order’s longstanding efforts to prove the antiquity of their order dating back to the Prophet Elijah, the inclusion of Ancient Ethiopia in these efforts tell a more complex […]
This talk follows Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Watara, a Timbuktu-born teenager who was enslaved in Jamaica from 1805 to 1834. Upon securing his manumission, Watara undertook a trans-Atlantic and trans-Saharan journey, in a bid to return home. A close examination of Watara’s words and writings about him, and a reconstruction of his trajectory, provides insight into […]
Marc Hertzman, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign Flying Home? Palmares and the Afterlife Most histories of Palmares, the sprawling collection of settlements in Brazil that became perhaps history’s largest fugitive slave society, end in 1695, when colonial forces assassinated the famous rebel leader Zumbi. My book project plays the story forward […]
Marc Hertzman, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign Flying Home? Palmares and the Afterlife Most histories of Palmares, the sprawling collection of settlements in Brazil that became perhaps history’s largest fugitive slave society, end in 1695, when colonial forces assassinated the famous rebel leader Zumbi. My book project plays the story forward […]
Mika Lior, Assistant Professor of Performing Arts at the University of Malta "Circling With/In: Choreographies of Gendered & Regendered Agency in Bahian Candomblé" Based on history, dance studies methodologies and critical ethnography, this paper addresses choreographies of invocation and incorporation in the Afro-Brazilian ritual practice of Candomblé through the lens of indigenous feminisms and choreographic analysis. […]
Atlantic Africa—the region extending from Senegal to Angola—has few natural harbors, compelling Africans to cross through surf to reach fisheries and coastal shipping lanes. Sources suggest that one thousand years ago Africans independently developed surfing to understand how to design and surf waves ashore in surf-canoes loaded with fish cargo. Today, Atlantic Africans remain the only people […]