The Legacy of Slavery and Emancipation in Europe and the Americas
Saint-Claude, Guadeloupe
March 9-11, 2001
Call for Papers
Deadline: 2000-10-05
The institution of slavery lasted for nearly 400 years in the Americas, and was a crucial force in the development of the nations of Western Europe and the United States. It was a system that depended on, and propelled, the creation and maintenance of racial hierarchies, and it laid the foundation for contemporary attitudes towards and ideas about race in the Americas and Europe. Recently, scholarship in this area has expanded enormously, elucidating a great deal about the social, economic, and political causes and consequences of slavery and emancipation. Yet, understanding the connections between these issues and contemporary problems of race/integration is a complex task. The conference will bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines to discuss the legacy of slavery and emancipation. How did systems of slavery and the process of emancipation influence the development of racial thinking? How can we trace the heritage of these institutions in our contemporary concerns about immigration and integration?
The Guadeloupe conference will be the first of a series of three conferences organized by The Centre d'Etude des Politiquesd'Immigration, d'Intégration et de Citoyenneté [a research center located in Paris and under the direction of Patrick Weil, (University of Paris 1-Sorbonne)], Erik Bleich (Middlebury College), Laurent Dubois (Michigan State University), Stéphane Dufoix (University of Paris X-Nanterre) and Randall Hansen (Oxford University); it is funded by a grant from the German Marshall Fund. The overarching goal of the meetings is to provide new perspective, particularly by integrating the history of slavery, emancipation, and colonization on contemporary debates about immigration and integration in Western Europe and the United States. The conferences will be organized in a workshop format, with papers distributed in advance. Sessions will begin with brief presentations by the authors of the papers and will focus on discussion. A selection of papers from each conference will also be prepared for publication.
We invite paper proposals for the Guadeloupe conference, which will take place in St. Claude, Guadeloupe, and in nearby Basse-Terre, from scholars from all disciplines working on the history and legacy of slavery and emancipation. The Greater Caribbean will be given a privileged place in the workshop as a comparative frame of reference for European nations and the United States, but papers on other regions will receive full consideration. We are particularly interested in papers that provide a method for making connections between the past and the present. If we find that certain proposals are more appropriate for the subsequent conferences in the series, we may invite applicants to participate in these conferences instead of the Guadeloupe conference. Some funding is available to cover travel and lodging for participants.
The Guadeloupe conference will be co-organized by Professor Patrick Weil, director of CEPIC, History Department, Paris 1-Sorbonne, Laurent Dubois, Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, and Mickaïlla Périna, fellow at the DuBois Institute at Harvard; it will be coordinated by Sam Spital at the CEPIC in Paris. Proposals should include a title, 1-2 page description of the proposed paper, and a curriculum vitae. Because the proposals will be evaluated in France and the United States, we request that you send one printed copy of all materials to each of the addresses below and an email attachment containing your materials to both addresses.
The languages of the conference are French and English.
The deadline is October 5, 2000.
Contact information:
Laurent Dubois
Department of History
301 Morrill Hall
Michigan State University
E. Lansing, MI 48104
Email: duboisl@msu.edu
CEPIC/ Centre d'histoire sociale du 20eme siècle
9, rue Malher
75181 Paris cedex 04
France
Email: weil@univ-paris1.fr
Posted: 28 August 2000