Competing Memories: The Politics of Remembering Enslavement, Emancipation, and Indenturship in the Caribbean
Organized by Sinah Kloß (Bonn), Andrea Gremels (Frankfurt), Ulrike Schmieder (Hannover)
Bonn Center for Slavery and Dependency Studies, Universität Bonn
Co-Funded by DFG
Co-Hosted by SOCARE Society for Caribbean Research

The conference is going to take place on March 29–31, 2023 at the University Forum, Heussallee 18-24 in Bonn.
Please register for the conference via email to events@dependency.uni-bonn.de by March 15, 2023

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29, 2023
2:30 – 3:00 PM (CEST) WELCOME (Sinah Kloß, Andrea Gremels, Ulrike Schmieder)

3:00 – 4:30 PM – KEYNOTE
Hanétha Vété-Congolo-Leibnitz (Bowdoin College, USA)
Sonjé sé Mabouya: A View on Memory and Remembrance in and from the Caribbean
Chair: Ulrike Schmieder (Leibniz University Hannover, Germany); Room 1

5:00 – 6:30 PM – PANEL SESSION 1

Room 1
Conflicting Memories and Reparations
Chair: Andrea Gremels (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany)

La esclavitud en Cuba: Memoria y reparación vs olvido histórico
Zuleica Romay Guerra
(Casa de las Américas, Cuba)

Some Memories Are Not Negotiable: The Coloniality of Anti-Black Racism
Artwell Cain
(University of Aruba, Aruba)

Literature, Reparation, and Competing Memories in the Caribbean: Chamoiseau´s Critique of Colonial Modernity at the Example of his Photography Books
Mario Laarmann
(University of Saarland, Germany)

Room 2
Remembrance and Visions of Africa in Cuba
Chair: Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger (Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany)

Deconstructing Memories of the Nineteenth-Century Cuban Poet, Plácido
Ana Mateos
(Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany)

(Re)collecting Africa in Republican Cuba
Vanessa Ohlraun
(Leibniz University Hannover, Germany)

Los murales abakuá: Coeficientes visuales de narrativas míticas
Marcela Andrade
(Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

6:30 PM – Awarding of the Socare Dissertation Prize 2021/2022

7:00 PM – Reception

THURSDAY, MARCH 30, 2023
9:30 – 11:00 AM – PANEL SESSION 2

Room 1
History and Archives
Chair: Jutta Wimmler (University of Bonn, Germany)

The Politics and Poetics of Remembering
Asma Hussein
(Georg August University Göttingen, Germany)

Judiciary Testimonies of Enslaved Persons in Trials against Enslavers – an Underestimated (Re)source of Remembering Slavery?
Teresa Göltl
(University of Heidelberg, Germany)

The Role of Archives in Historical Research and the Construction of Memory
Ulrike Mühlschlegel
(Ibero-American Institute, Berlin, Germany)

11:30 AM – 1:00 PM – PANEL SESSION 3

Room 1
Historic Memory and Gender
Chair: Ulrike Schmieder (Leibniz University Hannover, Germany)

“oh mary don´t you weep don’t you moan”: Re-imagining Mary Prince in Contemporary Literature and Art
Jennifer Leetsch
(University of Bonn, Germany)

Before and After Caribbean Iconoclasm: Joséphine Be-headed and Solitude´s Pedestals (Braimville, Bagneux, Paris)
Kathleen Gyssels
(University of Antwerp, Belgium)

Remembering Slavery through Maryse Condé’s Moi, Tituba, sorcière…: Female Protagonism and the Poetics and Politics of Witchcraft
Andrea Gremels
(Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany)

Room 2
Nation-Building and Multilinguism of Memory
Chair: Silke Jansen (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany)

Construcción de la memoria en el Caribe francófono: Tradiciones, cultura y lenguas en Patrick Chamoiseau y Camille Moutoussamy
Francisco Aiello
(Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata – CONICET, Argentina)

Ethnic Relations in a Plural Society: A Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour in Suriname
Maurits Hassankhan
(Anton de Kom University of Suriname, Suriname)

Practices of Memory-Making in the Novelistic Oeuvre of Frank Martinus Arion
Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger
(Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany)

2:00 – 4:00 PM – Socare e.V. General Assembly

4:30 – 6:00 PM – KEYNOTE

Olívia Gomes da Cunha (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
The Earth is Sweet
Chair: Sinah Kloß (University of Bonn, Germany); Room 1

FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 2023
9:30 – 11:00 AM – PANEL SESSION 4

Room 1
Museums, Statues, and Heritage Sites
Chair: Mario Laarmann (University of Saarland, Germany)

De l’impératrice Joséphine à l’esclavisée Émilie: les pratiques mémorielles au Domaine de La Pagerie, à la Martinique, 1944-2022
Jessica Pierre-Louis
(Independent Researcher, Martinique)

Remembrance and Silence: Enslavement at Plantation Sites in Martinique and Cuba
Ulrike Schmieder
(Leibniz University Hannover, Germany)

Remembering Enslavement in 21st Century French Seaport Museums
Julia Nitz
(Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany)

Room 2
Memories and Narratives of the Haitian Revolution
Chair: Jennifer Leetsch (University of Bonn, Germany)

Remembering the Haitian Revolution Otherwise: Rediscovering Joseph Antenor Firmin´s The Equality of Races (1885)
Nina Schneider
(University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany)

Heinrich von Kleist: The Betrothal in St. Domingo (1811) – a Prussian View on Haiti around 1800
Adrian Robanus
(Kleist-Museum, Frankfurt/Oder, Germany)

How Not to Talk about Slave Revolution: Early Accounts and Representations of the Revolutionary Events in Haiti
Anja Bandau
(Leibniz University Hannover, Germany)

11:30 AM – 1:00 PM – PANEL SESSION 5

Room 1
Plural Memories and Indenture
Chair: Sinah Kloß (University of Bonn, Germany)

One, Two, Many: Stuart Hall´s Reflections on Hybridity in the Caribbean
Jarula Wegner
(Zhejiang University, China)

“Mémoire en nasse”: Entangled, Multidirectional and Creolised Memories of Indenture and Slavery in Guadeloupe
Sandrine Soukaï
(Gustave Eiffel University, France)

‘Overlooked, Miscategorized, Misunderstood’: Moving towards ‘an-other’ Windrush in the UK
María del Pilar Kaladeen
(University of London, UK)

Room 2
The Politics of Narrative
Chair: Anne Brüske (University of Regensburg, Germany)

“the powerful memory of ghosts”: Haunting (and) Guilt in Maisy Card’s These Ghosts Are Family
Marie Berndt
(University of Bonn, Germany)

From Atlantic Slave Trade to Modern Slavery: Politics of Memory and Education in L’esclavage raconté à ma fille by Christiane Taubira
Miriam Lay Brander
(Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany)

Miroir de mémoire? Analyse des récits de Maryse Condé comme réflexion d´une mémoire collective de l´esclavage, de l´engagisme et de l´émancipation dans les Caraïbes
Chrisan Blake
(University of Zurich, Switzerland)

2:00 – 3:30 PM – PANEL SESSION 6

Room 1
Oral Histories and Testimony
Chair: Andrea Gremels (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany)

Memories of the Haitian Revolution and the Plantation Regimes in the Caribbean: The Non-History of Ex-Slaves
Michael Zeuske
(University of Bonn, Germany)

“Pour moi, c’était hier” – Memoria de la esclavitud en el Caribe y (docu)ficción en _ Passage du milieu_ (2001)
Karen Genschow
(Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany)

La literatura como espacio intersticial de la cultura: Tradición y contra-memoria en las letras latino-americanas
Juan Felipe Castro Maldonado
(Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany)

Room 2
Like a Plantation-Machine: The Remakings of the Earth and the Plantatiocene
Chair: Clémence Léobal (CNRS-Lavue, France)

Guyanese Expectations in the Age of Oil: Ethnographic Notes from Demerara
Rogério Viana
(Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Mining to Escape the Plantation? The Case of Small Scale Gold Mining in French Guiana
Clémence Léobal
(CNRS-Lavue, France)

3:30 – 5:00 PM: Final Discussion