Important Dates

The Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence is presenting an

ONLINE BOOK TALK

Prof. Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, University of London, in conversation with Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler, University of Bayreuth, on the book

Legacies of Trade and Empire: Breaking Silences

• Thursday, 13.06.2024 - 12-1pm (CEST)
  
  
• Zoom Meeting:

  https://uni-bayreuth.zoom.us/j/93141203142?pwd=NS9uTVhzWlBVTm1yYlFIOUJ3M0lxZz09 |Meeting ID: 931 4120 3142 | Passcode: 154421

• Find the flyer here

About the book:

This book problematises established histories of slavery and indentured labour in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and South America, as carried out through European empires, to interpret the impact of trade, particularly in the region surrounding the Indian Ocean. The discourse within the chapters by Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, Ute Fendler, Tom Hoogervorst, Xin Li, Frederick Noronha, Marie-Christine Parent and Beheroze Shroff explores the aesthetics of silence, the poetics of relation, creolisation, agency, knowledge transfers, decolonisation, and the afterlife of empire, as well as the assertion of identities, musical practices, and cuisines. These critical analyses utilise case studies from India, Indonesia, Seychelles, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Suriname. To break the silence on legacies of empire, the authors look through the prisms of history, politics, economics, sociology, linguistics, literature, anthropology and ethnomusicology. They search through the annals of history for ways of living harmoniously in an increasingly globalised world.

About the Authors

Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, FRAS, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies of the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is also a Senior Associate, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, a Collaborative Researcher at the University of Colombo, and Chair of the ICOMOS National Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage (Sri Lanka). Her scholarship focuses on Indian Ocean commerce, migration and cultural exchange within historical, linguistic, literary and ethnomusicological frameworks. Her publications include six monographs, one co-authored book, three edited books, twenty-eight book chapters, sixty-one articles in academic journals, nine encyclopedia entries, and four essays.

Beheroze Shroff is Lecturer in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. A long-time scholar of Siddis, Indians of African descent in Gujarat, India, Shroff’s publications include three co-edited books, eight book chapters, seven journal articles and five essays, as well as 11 films screened internationally in various festivals and academic venues.