University of Cologne (Neuer Senatssaal)

Organization: Merian Zentrum (Säule Köln): Barbara Potthast, Stefanie Gänger, Gesine Müller, Sarah Albiez-Wiek

This conference is concerned with discourses and practices of ‘conviviality’ – coexistence and cohabitation with difference – in the unequal societies of early and late modern South and Middle America and the Caribbean. It brings together scholars in the humanities and social sciences with an interest in ideas that envision forms of living – or, for that matter, working, dwelling, or learning – together that surmount, contain, or accommodate, difference. Focusing on the centuries spanning from the early 1500s into the late 1900s, papers examine a wide range of such endeavours in the southern Americas – from creolité movements in the Caribbean to nostalgia for Al-Andalus as a model for conviviality.

A first panel (I. In Theory: Ideals of Conviviality) examines visionary, utopian discourses of peaceable ‘conviviality’ in the realms of scholarship, society or religion; a second panel (In Reality: Structures of Conviviality) is devoted to the historical and material realities – from tax regimes to infrastructure – of containing, enabling, or policing coexistence and cohabitation with difference; a third panel (Contested Ground: Conviviality in Crisis) brings together papers that study contested, or failed projects of conviviality – instances of contestation, rupture, and conflict.

Keynotes: Karen Graubart (University of Notre Dame) and Susanne Klengel (Freie Universität Berlin)

Thursday, June 14th

9:00-9:30 Registration
09:30 – 10:00
WELCOME ADDRESSES
Workshop Opening

10:00 – 13:00
Panel I. In Theory: Ideals of Conviviality
Discussant: Christoph Müller (Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut)

Osvaldo Barreneche (Universidad Nacional de la Plata): Fraternal Adversaries. The Role of Opposition and Opponents in XX Century Latin American Political Discourse
Gesine Müller (Universität zu Köln): Modelos de “convivencia” en las letras caribeñas: entre construcciones esencialistas y proyecciones utópicas
Guillermo Zermeño (El Colegio del Mexico): Modernidad, globalización, mestizaje e identidad cultural
Barbara Potthast (Universität zu Köln): ¿La “nación guaraní”? Convivialidad en Paraguay
Peter W. Schulze (Universität zu Köln): “Antropofagia oswaldiana”: A Brazilian Epistemology for Conviviality

13:00 – 14:30 LUNCH BREAK

14:30 – 15:30
Keynote Lecture
Chair: Juan Piovani (Conicet / Universidad Nacional de La Plata)
Susanne Klengel (Freie Universität Berlin)
Relaciones peligrosas: Roberto Bolaño y el nacionalsocialismo. Nuevas
Investigaciones

16:00 – 18:30
Opening of photo exhibition “Maid in Brasil“ and Installation of “Parlor Talk” By Johanna Steindorf
Presentation: Sarah Albiez-Wieck (Universität zu Köln)

Friday, June 15th
09:00 – 10:00
Keynote Lecture
Chair: Marcos Nobre (Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento)
Karen Graubart (University of Notre Dame)
What Medieval Spanish Legal Practice Can Teach Us About Colonial Latin America

10:00 – 13:00
Panel II. In Reality: Structures of Conviviality
Discussant: Stefanie Gänger (Universität zu Köln)

Luciane Scarato (Maria Sibylla Merian Centre), Between the Roads and the Railway. The Materiality of Conviviality in Minas Gerais (18th and 19th centuries)
Manuel Góngora-Mera, Rocío Vera Santos, Sérgio Costa (Frei Universität Berlin): Convivialidad en ciudades mineras coloniales
Sarah Albiez-Wieck (Universität zu Köln), Producing and Negotiating Social Difference Through Tax Systems. A Comparative Approach to the Conviviality of Difference in the Spanish Empire
Maya Manzi (Maria Sibylla Merian Centre): Trans-human and trans-spatial convivialities: Comparing the political ecology and moral economies of mobility in Brazilian late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Ariadna Acevedo Rodrigo (Centro de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados, México): From Indians to Citizens: The Liberal Promise of Equality at the Grassroots (The Puebla and Oaxaca Sierras, Mexico, 1876-1911)

13:00 – 14:30 LUNCH BREAK

14:30 – 17:30
Panel III. Contested Ground: Conviviality in Crisis
Discussant: Angela Alonso (Universidade de São Paulo)

Gloria Chicote (Universidad Nacional de la Plata), La crisis de la convivialidad representada en la literatura popular impresa rioplatense (1890-1920)
Ronald Raminelli (Universidade Federal Fluminense): Colors, Races, and Qualities
Anna Guiteras Mombiola (Universidad de Barcelona): Núcleos escolares selvícolas: una labor de “convivialidad” civilizadora en la Amazonía boliviana (1930s-1960s)
Felipe Castro Gutierrez (UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas): Routine Violence and the Limits of Coexistence in a Colonial Society
Fernando Baldraia (Maria Sibylla Merian Centre): The Aging of (Haitian) Revolution: a whisper

17:45 – 18:45 CONCLUDING REMARKS

Sérgio Costa (FU Berlin), Barbara Potthast (Univ. zu Köln), Barbara Göbel (IAI)

19:00 Farewell