Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, are presenting international conference Slavery, Religion and Enlightenment.

19 – 22 June 2019

Faculty of Law, Charles University (nám. Curieových 901/7, Praha 1)

Lecture theatre 304 (3rd floor)

The idea of the conference stems from our conviction that the revitalization of the institution of slavery in the Modern Era, in connection to the overseas expansion and colonization, has been of extreme importance not only for European economy, but also to its intellectual development. The aim of the conference is to present a variety of discourses and approaches to slavery ranging from economic history, church history to history of ideas or philosophy, and is not restricted to any particular place on the globe, as the institution of slavery has been by its nature a global issue. Idea of plurality and cross-disciplinary openness is inherent to our conference design with a hope to promote a kind of not only academic awakening from collective amnesia surrounding slavery as phenomenon closely tied to the emergence of the Western civilization in its modern shape and even its post-modern or liquid stage marked by unprecedented scope of globalization.

Programme

Keynote speakers

Speakers

Programme

Keynote speakers

Madge Dresser (University of Bristol)

Remembering Atlantic slavery in the public arena

This presentation considers the extent to which Atlantic slavery in Britain has been articulated in the public arena, and the various forms it has taken. Be it public monuments, the naming of buildings, the shaping of a city’s tourist profile or the school curricula, the way slavery is remembered both at a national and municipal level tells us much about underlying social divisions, particularly around race, class and citizenship. Recent controversies which have arisen over this issue need to be considered in their particular locale as the specific political culture informing such controversies vary over time and place.

The presentation also reconsiders the relationship between such Enlightenment values as rationality, empirical research and objectivity, which purport to inform the academic investigation of Atlantic slavery, and the range of motivations informing the different and often conflicting ways slavery and its legacy have been popularly perceived. It asks how the way slavery is remembered relate to notions of identity, empire and civic belonging. After some general reflections about the way slavery has been remembered in Britain from the 1830s, it will focus on two contemporary case studies, namely the controversies over public monuments and slavery in Bristol, and the tensions generated between the proposed Holocaust memorial in London and a campaign to fund a memorial to enslaved Africans with similar status.

Markéta Křížová (Faculty of Arts, Charles University)

Reflections and impacts of (American) slavery in Central and Eastern Europe, 18th-19th century

While the revitalization of slavery in the Modern Era was of crucial importance for those European nations directly involved in colonization and exploitation of American continent and in trade relations with Africa, it had at the same time equally far-reaching – albeit indirect – impact also on regions at the margin of the Atlantic system. The Czech Lands, landlocked and apparently isolated from the processes that were going on overseas, will be used as an example to demonstrate not only the material consequences of the slavery-based economic development, but also the impact of the very knowledge of the existence of the institution of slavery upon the intellectual developments in the region.

Richard Price (College of William and Mary)

Maroons and their Communities in the Americas

Today, Maroons—self-liberated slaves and their descendants—still form semi-independent communities in several parts of the Americas, for example, in Suriname, French Guiana, Jamaica, Belize, Colombia, and Brazil. As the most isolated of Afro- Americans, they have since the 1920s been an important focus of scientific research, contributing to theoretical debates about slave resistance, the heritage of Africa in the Americas, the process of creolization, and the nature of historical knowledge among nonliterate peoples. This lecture surveys their history and discusses their present situation, including struggles to protect their territories and sovereignty.

Sally Price (College of William and Mary)

Drawing on slavery: Maroon art and contested stories of its origin

The Maroons, descendants of Africans who liberated themselves from plantation slavery in the colony of Suriname, are famous throughout the world for their rich arts. The women produce stunning textiles and sinuous engravings on the fruit of the calabash tree and the men carve elegant designs on everything from canoes and housefronts to combs and kitchen utensils. In addition, Maroon men in eastern Suriname and neighboring French Guiana have developed a vibrant, colorful art of painting, and have been producing it successfully for Western customers, both tourists and locals. Although we know that these arts began to be produced only in the nineteenth century, long after the Maroons were living independently in the forested interior, young artists who produce acrylic paintings for sale have constructed a narrative claiming that the arts originated during slavery, as a system communicating secret messages aimed at facilitating escape to freedom. This lecture explores the story of their narrative.

Speakers

František Kalenda

Religious defense of slavery in imperial Brazil (1822 - 1899)

Before the so-called "Golden Law" dealt the final blow to slavery in 1888, the Brazilian Empire went through decades of both utilitarian and moral arguments in favour or against this institution. This presentation aims to explore the attitudes of Brazilian groups towards slavery and especially the anti-abolitionist discourse as presented in their respective media outlets.

František Kalenda, PhD candidate in anthropology, Department of General Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University. In his doctoral research, he focuses on collaboration and conflict between Brazilian state and religious actors in the Imperial and early Republican period (1822-1930).

Tomáš Kunca

Very British images of the 18th century slavery vindication: Thomas Newton, David Hume and James Boswell

In the 1739 presentation of design for a new, experimentally based “science of man” or “science of human nature”, David Hume famously observed: “So true it is, that however other nations may rival us in poetry, and excel us in other agreeable arts, the improvements in reason and philosophy can only be owing to a land of toleration and of liberty”. Nonetheless, this “land of liberty and toleration” cultivated, incorporated, operated and vindicated probably the most effective system of Atlantic slavery in the course of the 18th century. “Improvements” not only “in reason and philosophy” proved to be at least not inessential part of this process and set of particular examples, sketches, images of slavery vindication is addressed in this talk to initiate some challenges to our deeply inherited ideas about more or less enlightened “men of letters” and their mission as proponents of unbounded humanity. The first example, which is from a pen of Thomas Newton, a Cambridge scholar and bishop of Bristol, represents the vindication of slavery as an “improvement” in the science of religion. The second explores insights provided by “philosophical man of letters” and hero of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume, including some biographical notes. The third one is rather peculiar, a piece of bizarre poetry written by James Boswell, a lawyer and a men of letters famed as a biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson. The three examples illustrate the justification of slavery in the age of reason searching for seemingly universal humanism.

Andrea Livesey and Richard Stone

Slavery and Universities: Bristol, Liverpool and Beyond

Bristol was a key port in the early days of the Atlantic Slave Trade, but institutions around the city have only just started to grapple with the financial and ethical implications of this disturbing source of the city’s wealth. Prompted by a student petition, research on the University of Bristol’s historic connections to the Atlantic slave economy has uncovered links to slave-produced tobacco, sugar, and chocolate, but also to abolitionists. This paper will explore how Bristol, and universities worldwide have reflected on, and responded to their multifarious historic links to slavery.

José Lingna Nafafé (University of Bristol)

Atlantic Slavery a Crime Against Natural, Human, Divine, and Civil Laws: Angolan Prince Lourenço da Silva Mendonça’s Court Case, Vatican 1684-1686

Moral and political debate on the abolition of slavery has always been understood to have been initiated by Europeans in 18th century. To the extent that Africans are recognised as playing any role in ending slavery, their efforts are typically imagined as confined to impulsive acts of resistance such as ‘shipboard’, ‘plantation and household revolts’, ‘flight’, ‘marronage’, and so on. Notwithstanding, none of these studies have gone beyond the obvious economic disruptions caused by enslaved on plantations, to examine the highly-organised, international-scale legal liberation headed by Mendonça in the Vatican on the 6th of March 1684. The court case presented by Mendonça on the abolition of slavery included different organizations, brotherhoods of Black people, and interest groups of ‘men’, ‘women’ and ‘young people’ of African descent in Spain, Portugal, Brazil and Africa. In addition to these groups, Mendonça also included other constituencies such as New Christians and the Native Americans. This scale of international initiative in the Atlantic led by Africans themselves has not before been researched since the inception of the Lusophone Atlantic slavery in the 15th century by Europeans. Mendonça questioned the institution of the Atlantic slavery, using four core principles to bolster his argument: Human, Natural, Divine, and Civil Laws. I argue that the relationship between Africans’ abolition discourse, the Inquisition of the New Christians, Native Brazilians and their common search for liberty, and how the denial of religious freedom was implicated with the denial of enslaved Africans’ humanity, is a nexus of dialogues that have not been considered together in the context of the Atlantic.

José Lingna Nafafé, Ph.D., is Lecturer in Portuguese and Lusophone Studies and Programme Director of the MA in Black Humanities, Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Bristol. Dr Lingna Nafafé’s academic interests embrace a number of inter-related areas, linked by the overarching themes of: Lusophone Atlantic African diaspora, seventeenth and eighteenth century Portuguese and Brazilian history; slavery and wage-labour, 1792-1850; race, religion and ethnicity; Luso-African migrants’ culture and integration in the Northern (England) and Southern Europe (Portugal and Spain); ‘Europe in Africa’ and ‘Africa in Europe’; and the relationship between postcolonial theory and the Lusophone Atlantic. Recent publications: Hawthorne, W & Nafafe, JL, 2016, ‘The historical roots of multicultural unity along the Upper Guinea Coast and in Guinea-Bissau’. Social Dynamics, vol 42., pp. 31-45, Nafafe, JL, 2016, ‘‘The Guinean Diaspora After 1998’, in Patrick Chabal and Toby Green (eds.). Guinea-Bissau, Micro-Satet to ‘Narco-Sate’.’. in: ‘The Guinean Diaspora After 1998’, in Patrick Chabal and Toby Green (eds.). Guinea-Bissau, Micro-Satet to ‘Narco-Sate’.., pp. 143-158, Nafafe, JL, 2013, ‘“Europe in Africa and Africa in Europe: Rethinking Postcolonial Space, Cultural Encounters and Hybridity”, European Journal of Social Theory.’. European Journal of Social Theory, vol 16., pp. 51-68.

Lenka Philippová

Legacies of the Enlightenment and Black Religions: Slavery, Race and Visions of Future in the Segregation Era

Leaving aside the better-known legacy of the Enlightenment in the abolitionist movement, the paper focuses on how was this critical discourse against slavery and racial inequality developed within black churches after the Civil War. The aim of the paper is to present the diverse ways African Americans employed to account for slavery and its place and meaning in history and how these informed their visions of the future in the era of segregation and state racism. Articulated within the frame of American Protestant theology and the ethos of progress, the responses were diverse, ranging from visions of a raceless America, to historic mission of the black race and radical nationalist discourse. In relation to black religious nationalism and Pan-Africanism the influence of black freemasonry will be also mentioned.

Lenka Philippová, graduated from Hussite Theology and Religious Studies at the Hussite Faculty of Theology, Charles University. She is currently finishing her Ph.D. in history at the Centre of Ibero-American Studies. Her dissertation project focuses on Jamaican Rastafari movement from the perspective of religious transmission. Other research interests: intersections of religion, culture and politics, Afro-American history and religion, methods and theories in the study of religions. Seected publication: „Millennial Aspects of the Rastafari Movement“ In: Vojtíšek, Zdeněk et alii: Millennialism. Expecting the End of the World in the Past and Present. Praha: Dingir. 2013. s. 61–70.

Stephanie M. Volder

“What will be our freedom?” : Gothic insurrection and the hauntings of history in Hamel, the Obeah man

“What will be our freedom?” asks the black slave protagonist Hamel in the novel Hamel, the Obeah man published anonymously in London in 1827 by Hunt and Clarke. The question of freedom, especially a liberal idea of freedom as the absence of interference, is central to this early Caribbean novel. It portrays the unfolding of a slave rebellion in 1822 in the northeastern Jamaican parishes of Portland, St. George, and St. Mary. I argue that the novel represents a pro-planter perspective on Jamaican emancipation history, while at the same time both supporting and contradicting a Western Enlightenment view of history and the “advance in civilization” through the use of Gothic tropes. In Hamel we see a disavowal of political revolution in favor of a “revolution in manners” among the enslaved West African population. Civilization and progress should come about as a product of gradual emancipation and the development of a free market economy in the British sugar colony. The slaves should be taught to enlarge their “limited desires” and participate in the marketplace as both laborers and consumers. However, the novel’s use of gothic tropes like necromancy, cannibalism and the supernatural in depictions of black rebellion provide a compelling picture of the strong resistance and the culture of the enslaved black majority. By discussing Hamel in relation to the already established tradition of the British Gothic novel, I will show how the novel exploits Gothic conventions as a way of engaging with a traditional Enlightenment historiography. Through a multifaceted use of Gothic images of race and slave revolt, Hamel depicts the reality of black insurrection in colonial Jamaica at this crucial moment in Britain's consolidation of its Empire.

Biographies

Madge Dresser, Ph.D., F.R.H.S., R.S.A., is Honorary Professor in Historical Studies at the University of Bristol and also a Senior Research Fellow at the University of the West of England after retiring from her post as Associate Professor of History there. She has served as academic advisor to various museums, worked closely with Historic England, Heritage Lottery Fund, Colonial Countryside Project at the University of Leicester and the Legacy of British Slave Ownership Project at the University of London. A committed public historian, she has participated in national and local debates and broadcasts on race, hidden histories and on the memorialisation of slavery, most recently on BBC Radio4’s Archive on 4’s programme ‘As the Statues Fall’ 16 September 2017 and a TedxBristol talk on Slavery and Statues 2017 and in 2019, ‘Sugar Empire’ a series for Busan MBC (South Korea). She has devised various history trails which establish a more inclusive history of Bristol and is a trustee of the human rights charity Journey to Justice.

Her publications include Slavery Obscured: the Social History of the Slave Trade in Bristol (2001, 2007, 2016),’Set in Stone? Statues and Slavery in London’, History Workshop Journal (Autumn 2007),Ethnic Minorities and the City: Bristol 1000-2000 (with Peter Fleming), (20017), ‘Remembering Slavery and Abolition in Bristol’, Slavery & Abolition, (June 2009)‘The Slavery and the British Country House (co-edited with Andrew Hann) (2013),Women and the City: Bristol 1373-2000 (2016), ‘Slavery and the British Country House’ in The British Country House Revisited (edited by David Cannadine and Jeremey Musson), (October 2018) and a forthcoming chapter, ‘Pero’s afterlife’ in Briton’s Black Past Past (edited by Gretchen Gerzina) (2019).

František Kalenda, Ph.D. candidate in anthropology, Department of General Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University. In his doctoral research, he focuses on collaboration and conflict between Brazilian state and religious actors in the Imperial and early Republican period (1822-1930).

Markéta Křížová, Ph.D., is Professor in Ibero-American Studies at Charles University and Head of the Center for African Studies at the same faculty. She is member of the steering committee of ENIUGH (European Network in Universal and Global History), and of the Advisory Board of the Czech National Museum. Her research focuses on Early Modern intellectual history, European overseas expansion, colonial history of America and cultural encounters, competitions and transfers.

Her publications include the monograph La ciudad ideal en el desierto: Proyectos misionales de la Compaňía de Jesús y la Iglesia Morava en la América colonial, Prague 2004 [Ideal city in the wilderness: missionary projects of the Society of Jesus and Moravian Church in colonial America], focused on the mission as art of the „utopian“ stream of European thinking of this period, The strength and sinews of this western world...: African slavery, American colonies and the effort for reform of European society in the Early Modern Era, Prague 2008, which discussed the European discourse on slavery especially in connection with the notion of „freedom“ as it appeared throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, and Reyes, emprendedores, misioneros: Rivalidad imperial y sincretismo colonial en la Costa de Mosquitia, siglo XIX, Prague 2016 [Kings, entrepreneurs, missionaries: Imperial rivalry and colonial syncretism on the Mosquito Coast, 19th century], dealing with the problem of imperial competition, cultural syncretism and identity-building in this specific American region.

Tomáš Kunca, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University. He is working on a new biography of David Hume, particularly period 1729 – 1734, and from 2017 presented series of papers at the University of Bristol, University of Edinburgh and University of Oxford as an initial step for a book project. Selected recent conference papers/invited lectures: ´Hume, Horse Riding, and Prosperity of Civil Society´, Hume´s Science of Human Nature: Perspectives of Interpretation, Prague, 31 August – 3 September 2016, ´Hume´s Master in Bristol (1734), Michael Miller: An Unknown Patron of Enlightenment?´, Hume Conference: Hume’s Thought and Hume’s Circle on 22 June 2017, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), University of Edinburgh,´Hume in Bristol, 1734´, Oxford Hume Forum, Hertford College Oxford, 26. 4. 2018, ´A Linen Draper of Bristol, Mr Peach, and his Literary Circle: Dr Thomas Sheridan, David Hume, Hannah More and John Cleland´, Department of History, University of Bristol, 2. 10. 2018, ´A History of the ´Anecdote´ and Hume´s Circle in Bristol, 1734´, ECENS, University of Edinburgh, 5. 10. 2018.

Andrea Livesey, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Science, Liverpool John Moores University. The chronological scope of her research covers colonial America through to the present day. Her work focuses on race, sexual violence, and the legacies of slavery in North America and beyond. Her current monograph finds links between sexual violence and the wider violence of slavery to illuminate how sexual violence had become normalised as part of a wider technology of slaveholding. She published journal articles and book chapters like: ‘Quantitative Histories’, Chapter in D. Doddington & E. Dal Lago eds., Writing the History of Slavery, Bloomsbury “Writing History Series” [forthcoming], 'Conceived in Violence: Enslaved Mothers and Children Born of Rape in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana' , Slavery and Abolition, 38.2 (2017), and ‘Race, Slavery and the Expression of Sexual Violence in Louisa Picquet, The Octoroon’, American Nineteenth Century History, 19.3 (2018) .

José Lingna Nafafé, Ph.D., is Lecturer in Portuguese and Lusophone Studies and Programme Director of the MA in Black Humanities, Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Bristol. Dr Lingna Nafafé’s academic interests embrace a number of inter-related areas, linked by the overarching themes of: Lusophone Atlantic African diaspora, seventeenth and eighteenth century Portuguese and Brazilian history; slavery and wage-labour, 1792-1850; race, religion and ethnicity; Luso-African migrants’ culture and integration in the Northern (England) and Southern Europe (Portugal and Spain); ‘Europe in Africa’ and ‘Africa in Europe’; and the relationship between postcolonial theory and the Lusophone Atlantic. Recent publications: Hawthorne, W & Nafafe, JL, 2016, ‘The historical roots of multicultural unity along the Upper Guinea Coast and in Guinea-Bissau’. Social Dynamics, vol 42., pp. 31-45, Nafafe, JL, 2016, ‘‘The Guinean Diaspora After 1998’, in Patrick Chabal and Toby Green (eds.). Guinea-Bissau, Micro-Satet to ‘Narco-Sate’.’. in: ‘The Guinean Diaspora After 1998’, in Patrick Chabal and Toby Green (eds.). Guinea-Bissau, Micro-Satet to ‘Narco-Sate’.., pp. 143-158, Nafafe, JL, 2013, ‘“Europe in Africa and Africa in Europe: Rethinking Postcolonial Space, Cultural Encounters and Hybridity”, European Journal of Social Theory.’. European Journal of Social Theory, vol 16., pp. 51-68.

Lenka Philippová, graduated from Hussite Theology and Religious Studies at the Hussite Faculty of Theology, Charles University. She is currently finishing her Ph.D. in history at the Centre of Ibero-American Studies. Her dissertation project focuses on Jamaican Rastafari movement from the perspective of religious transmission. Other research interests: intersections of religion, culture and politics, Afro-American history and religion, methods and theories in the study of religions. Seected publication: „Millennial Aspects of the Rastafari Movement“ In: Vojtíšek, Zdeněk et alii: Millennialism. Expecting the End of the World in the Past and Present. Praha: Dingir. 2013. s. 61–70.

Richard Price, Ph.D., anthropologist and historian, received his Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. Even though he realized fieldworks in various locations, he is best known for his research among the Afro-Americans in Surinam and French Guiana and on the Caribbean islands, some of which he realized with his wife Sally, studying the dynamics of cultural development and identity formation of the runaway slave societies and making an important contribution to the anthropological study of creolization and cultural syncretism. He taught (and was chair of the Department of Anthropology) at Johns Hopkins University, at Sorbonne in Paris, Stanford University, Princeton University, University of Florida, Universidade Federal da Bahia, and at the College of William and Mary (where he is currently Professor Emeritus). Since the 1990s, he has aided the Maroons in Surinam do defend their rights. In 2014, he received the Premio Internacional Fernando Ortiz and the same year he was decorated as “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres” for his important contributions to anthropological research.

His publications, many of them award-winning, include Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (edited and with an introduction by Richard Price), Garden City 1972, the first conceptualization of Maroon (runaway slave) communities throughout the Americas in comparative perspective, framework; First-Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), and Alabi’s World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), dedicated to the historical consciousness of the Maroon communities; and Travels with Tooy: History, Memory, and the African American Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), … innovative approach to the work of anthropologist and his way of translating the experience of studied peoples into the “scientific” language, and Rainforest Warriors (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), telling the story of the Surinam Maroons who struggle to protect their territory against the encroachments of the state of Suriname. Several of the books were co-authored with Sally Price: Afro-American Arts of the Suriname Rain Forest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), Two Evenings in Saramaka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), Equatoria (New York: Routledge, 1992), The Root of Roots: Or, How Afro-American Anthropology Got Its Start (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press/ University of Chicago Press, 2003), etc. Richard Price’s texts have been translated into French, Spanish, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Saamakatongo and Czech.

Sally Price, Ph.D. anthropologist and historian of art, studied at Harvard and Sorbonne, and received her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University, taught at Johns Hopkins, Sorbonne, Stanford University, Princeton University, University of Florida, Universidade Federal da Bahia, College of William and Mary etc. She conducted fieldworks in various locations, but is best known for her study of the Afro-American societies in Surinam, French Guiana, and the Caribbean, but also for the explorations into the Western constructions of non-Western art. In 2000, Sally Price was elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2014 she was decorated by France's Ministry of Culture as “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres” for her important contributions to anthropological research.

Her texts include prize-winning Co-Wives and Calabashes (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), an analysis of the ways that cultural ideas about the genders influence Saramaka women’s art and artistic activity and the complementary contributions that these artistic activities make to their social life; Caribbean Contours (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985, edited with Sidney W. Mintz); Primitive Art in Civilized Places (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Maroon Arts: Cultural Vitality in the African Diaspora (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999, with Richard Price), Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006, with Richard Price). She had also written on French politics and the museology questions (Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s Museum on the Quai Branly, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Sally Price’s texts have been translated into Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Richard Stone, Ph.D., is Teaching Fellow in History, Department of Historical Studies (History), University of Bristol. His specific research areas include international trade, the growth of the English colonies in the Americas, and Piracy. He completed his PhD on Bristol’s seventeenth century overseas trade in 2012, and is currently developing this into a research monograph. This research represented the first attempt to track the evolution of trade over a period of more than a century and has challenged many previous perceptions regarding the city’s trade, in particular showing that trade with the American and West Indian colonies developed much faster and much earlier than had previously been assumed, more than fifty years before Bristol became officially involved in the slave trade. Selected publications: Bristol and the Birth of the Atlantic Economy, 1500-1700, (Boydell and Brewer, forthcoming), ‘Bristol’s Overseas Trade in the Later Fifteenth Century: The Evidence of the ‘Particular’ Customs Accounts’, in E.T. Jones and R. Stone (eds.) The World of the Newport Medieval Ship: Trade, Politics and Shipping in the Mid-Fifteenth Century, (University of Wales Press, 2018), pp. 181-204, ‘The overseas trade of Bristol before the Civil War’, The International Journal of Maritime History, 23, 2, (2011), pp. 211-240. Selected recent conference papers/invited lectures: ‘Slavery and Bristol University’ at ‘Slavery Past and Present’, (Bristol Cathedral, September 2018), ‘Visibility and Invisibility of Slavery Memorialization: Bristol’s Untold Story’ at ‘Slavery’s Untold Stories’, (University of Liverpool, October 2017), ‘Slavery Remembered and Slavery Obscured: The Disrupted and Disrupting Memory of Bristol’s Guilty Secret’, at ‘Disrupted Landscapes, a Literary and Visual Landscapes Symposium’, (University of Bristol, June, 2017).

Stephanie M. Volder, Ph.D. is a fellow at the Department of Comparative Literature and Rhetoric, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark. Research areas: The Gothic, The literary history of slavery, the Caribbean, Jamaican slavery. Thesis: "Gothic representations of slavery and insurrection: The dispute over the meaning of freedom in the early 19th century Caribbean Gothic ".

Her research is an investigation of the horror stories told from and about the sugar colony of Jamaica.

Her questions are like how, and why, the Gothic as a genre and aesthetic mode was used in European and colonial debates on slavery and freedom in the early 19th century. She is interested in what versions of history and notions of freedom the Gothic texts helped to negotiate on both sides of the slavery debate – both for and against immediate emancipation. How did the Gothic genre give form to slave revolts and unrest in the decades leading up to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833? Gothic depictions of slave rebellion in Jamaica – in novels, travel writing, political documents, magazines, news articles and poetry – can give us a new perspective on this important period of transition from cattle slavery to a free market economy. In Jamaica a liberal notion of freedom and progress was interestingly merged with a colonial paternalist ideology as a way of modifying a liberal ideology to meet a local problem: How to create a transition from slavery to freedom that evades the horrors of a revolutionary bloodbath?