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Myriad Materialities: Towards a New Global Writing of Colonial Ports and Port Cities

Funded and supported by TORCH, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

In partnership with the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Supported by the DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

 

2 July 2021 (Virtual World Café)

8-9 July 2021 (Keynote, Panels, Commissioned Sound Work & Artist Talkback)

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Keynote: Kristin Mann (Emory University)

Commissioned Sound Artist: Linda O Keeffe (University of Edinburgh)

Friday 2 July 2021 (all times BST)

Virtual World Café

12:20-12:30 (10 min)

Welcome remarks

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Yvonne Liao (CPAGH/University of Oxford, UK)

12:30-13:45 (75 min)

3 x 20-minute breakouts + 3 x 5-minute changeovers

 

Format: The participants will be organised into 3 groups on the day and will rotate through the 20-minute breakouts, before reconvening for a general discussion.

 

Breakout 1 

Materiality and Commodities/Consumption: Rethinking Colonial Ports Through Luxury Goods and Everyday Items

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Hosts: Hatice Yıldız (CPAGH/University of Edinburgh, UK) and Ayse Polat (University of Cambridge)

Moderator: Min-Erh Wang (CPAGH/University of Oxford)

 

Session Blurb:

How did the production and consumption of commodities shape global connections through colonial ports? 

 

This session will explore the ways in which the production and consumption of materials including textiles, sugar, tea, coffee, spices, oil, and silver shaped (and continues to shape) connections and power relations built within and through global ports. 

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Breakout 2

Materiality and Place

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Host: Olivia Durand (CPAGH/University of Oxford)

Moderator: Helena F. S. Lopes (CPAGH/University of Bristol)

 

Session Blurb: 

What can the interior urban landscape reveal about colonial port dynamics and exchanges taking place beyond the marine? 


Most studies of the legacies of colonialism have focused on port cities. However, the global connections fostered by imperialism did not stop at maritime borders and infiltrated the interior of most territories. Taking the example of Oxford – city and university – as a nexus of knowledge and empire, this session will survey the ways in which the materiality of the urban landscape reveals stories of expansionism, displacement, and networks that reach well beyond the marine.

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Breakout 3

Materiality and Provenance

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Host: Julia Binter (CPAGH/Zentralarchiv/Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz)

Moderator: Katharina Oke (CPAGH/Universität Graz, Austria)

 

Session Blurb:

When do port cities become colonial, and what material traces of this shift in power and hierarchies can we find in the museum?

 

Many colonial port cities grew out of, or violently replaced, existing hubs of translocal trade. Objects which can be found in museums today materialise this shift in power and hierarchies. This session will trace the routes of objects from colonial port cities to ‘Cities of Empire’ like Berlin, and also explore how provenance research and its focus on materiality can provide new insights into the agency with which various social actors shaped emerging colonial port cities.

13:45-14:00 (15 min)

Break

14:00-15:00 (60 min)

General Discussion

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Moderators: Yvonne Liao, Helena F. S. Lopes, Katharina Oke, Min-Erh Wang

Thursday 8 July 2021 (all times BST)

Panels

Keynote

12:20-12:30 (10 min)

Welcome remarks

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Yvonne Liao (CPAGH/University of Oxford, UK)

Alexis von Poser (Deputy Director, Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz)

12:30-14:15 (105 min)

Panel: Reframing Class in Colonial Ports and Port Cities

 

Chair: Olivia Durand (CPAGH/University of Oxford, UK)

Discussant: Radha Kapuria (Social and Cultural History, University of Sheffield, UK)

 

Ryan Bean (History and Latin American Studies, DePauw University, USA) 

‘Malleable ¿Spaniards?: Cultural Mimicry, Andean Objects, and the Destabilization of Ethno-Racial Hierarchies in the Colonial Port City of Lima, Peru’

 

Lasse Heerten (Transnational and Global History, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany) 

‘Cast in Stone: The Construction of Hamburg’s Free Port and the Speicherstadt as a Global Urban Bourgeois Space’

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Grant Kleiser (History, Columbia University, USA) 

‘Free Trade, Slave Trade: Combating the British Free Port Act’s Extension of African Slavery’

14:15-14:45 (30 min)

Break

14:45-16:30 (105 min)

Panel: Deconstructing Race in Colonial Ports and Port Cities

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Chair: Helena F. S. Lopes (CPAGH/University of Bristol, UK)

Discussant: Saima Nasar (Social and Cultural History, University of Bristol, UK) 

 

Shaul Marmari (Jewish History, Universität Leipzig, Germany) 

‘Learning (a) Trade: Jewish Education in Indian Ocean Ports’

 

Juliana M. Pistorius (Musicology, University of Huddersfield, UK)

‘Eugenic Exports: Performing the Racialised Archive of Colonial Swakopmund’

 

Florian Wieser (Deutsches Medizinhistorisches Museum Ingolstadt, Germany) 

‘The Racial Periphery of Colonial Cartagena de las Indias, 16th to 17th Centuries’

16:30-17:00 (30 min)

Break

17:00-18:10 (70 min)

Keynote

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Chair: Katharina Oke (CPAGH/Universität Graz, Austria)

 

Kristin Mann (History, Emory University, US)

‘Subaltern Perspectives on Circulation, Encounter, and the Mutable Materialities of Gender, Race, and Class in a 19th-Century Atlantic Port: A View from Lagos’

18:10-18:15 (5 min)

Closing remarks

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Katharina Oke (CPAGH/Universität Graz, Austria)

Friday 9 July 2021 (all times BST)

Panels

Commissioned Sound Work & Artist Talkback

12:15-12:20 (5 min)

Welcome remarks

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Yvonne Liao (CPAGH/University of Oxford, UK)

12:20-14:05 (105 min)

Panel: (Un)Gendering Colonial Ports and Port Cities

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Chair: Hatice Yıldız (CPAGH/University of Edinburgh, UK)

Discussant: Su Lin Lewis (Urban History and Gender History, University of Bristol, UK)

 

Paola Ivanov (Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, Germany) 

‘Women’s Aesthetics as a Crucial Means for the Production of Translocality on the East African Swahili Coast’

 

Antonieta Reis Leite (Architectural History, University of Coimbra, Portugal) 

‘Architecture and Gender in Portuguese Atlantic Island Cities: A Window into Women Place and Space’

 

Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz (Art History, Ethnologisches Museum Berlin) 

‘The Divided House in Harbour Cities on the Straits of Malacca: Gendered Spaces in Transcultural Urban Contexts’

14:05-14:30 (25 min)

Break

14:30-15:30 (60 min)

Commissioned Sound Work – Premiere

As Gaeilge Time and Space

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Artist Talkback

Host: Min-Erh Wang (CPAGH/University of Oxford, UK)

 

In conversation with Linda O Keeffe (Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, UK)

15:30-16:00 (30 min)

Break

16:00-17:15 (75 min)

Panel: (Re)Writing and (Re)Translating the Materialities of Colonial Ports and Port Cities

 

Chair: Julia Binter (CPAGH/Zentralarchiv/Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz)

Discussant: Dorothy Armstrong (Royal College of Art, UK)

 

Jasmin Alley (Deutsches Hafenmuseum Hamburg, Stiftung Historische Museen Hamburg, Germany) 

‘“New” Narratives of Colonial Port Histories connected to Hamburg’

 

Mareike Pampus (Social Anthropology, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany) 

‘Culinary Connections: Towards an Anthropology of Port City Cuisine’

17:15-17:30 (15 min)

Closing remarks

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CPAGH Steering Committee

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