Socare Conference 2023

Competing Memories: The Politics of Remembering Enslavement, Emancipation and Indentureship in the Caribbean

The Caribbean is a space of dynamic and ever-changing memories. Here, as elsewhere, socio-political disparities and power imbalances commonly impact the capacity and means to promote specific memories and historical narratives, through which the past is created, adapted and negotiated. These dynamics influence which processes and memories are included or excluded in specific histories and which versions of the past are reconstructed, selected and interpreted.

The international conference “Competing Memories” hence focuses on the politics of memory and the constructions and representations of plural and divergent memories in Caribbean contexts, especially but not exclusively in relation to enslavement, emancipation and indentureship. As understandings of ‘history’ and ‘memory’ may vary, contributors will look at the different and strategic ways these concepts are used within and in relation to the Caribbean.

The conference is going to take place on March 29–31, 2023 at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS), University of Bonn, Germany. It is funded by the BCDSS and the German Research Foundation (DFG). It is co-hosted by the Society for Caribbean Research (Socare e.V.) and is organized by Sinah Kloß (Bonn), Andrea Gremels (Frankfurt) and Ulrike Schmieder (Hannover).

If you would like to participate, please register via email to events(at)dependency.uni-bonn.de by March 15, 2023. Please note that the conference is an in-person event.

Bonner Universitätsforum (Bonn University Forum)

Heussallee 18-24

D-53113 Bonn