As a historical institution and a lived experience, slavery continues to have a significant impact on societies throughout Africa and the African diaspora. Though historianshave long studied the Atlantic slave trade and its lingering social, cultural, and economic impacts, new interdisciplinary research directions are challenging established paradigms and broadening our understanding of how the slave trade affects identities, memories, and mobility. This panel brings together new research methodologies that examine the historical entanglements of slavery in Africa and beyond, emphasizing comparative perspectives on migration, memory, and sociopolitical change.
The purpose of the proposed panel is to shed light on a number of significant developments in contemporary slavery studies, including: (1) the role of monuments in shaping individual and collective memories in post-colonial Africa; (2) critical theory, archival silence, and the ethics of remembering slavery in Africa (3) Lineage incorporation, Domestic enslavement (4) the reconstruction of “histories of slavery” and the frameworks that connect historical enslavement to current patterns of social belonging, linguistics and migration. The panel draws on subjects including anthropology, archaeology, geography, history, linguistics, literary studies, and diaspora studies, and contributions will emphasize how archives, oral histories, and cultural narratives function as sites of contestation and reclamation. The collective aim of these perspectives is to reinterpret slavery as a living archive that continues to shape academic research, social policy discussions, and memory work. Ultimately, this panel highlights the need for contemporary slavery studies to balance the demands of the present with the weight of the past.
Please Email- Zachary Levy at Levyzac3@msu.edu or Joseph Bernard Eshun at eshunjos@msu.edu
Send abstract by March 15th.
Confronting Bondage: History, Memory, and New Research Relating to Slavery’s Legacy in African and African Diasporic Scholarship
