April
3–4,
2009

The UCLA Mellon Seminar in Black Atlantic Studies explores an emerging paradigm shift in African Diaspora scholarship. Inspired by Paul Gilroy’s innovative work in black cultural studies, the shift can be described as one from “roots” to “routes,” recasting Africa from a “baseline” to a “circuit” predicated on ethnic mixing and hybrid forms from the inception of the triangle trade. If European ports and capitals, Caribbean plantations, American shipyards and African cities became co-equal sites in an emerging trans-Atlantic field, so trade-union politics, plural societies, Pan-African movements and expressive musical and ritual hybrids developed as hallmarks of a distinctive “counter-modernity.”

Excavating the Past, a two-day conference in honor of UCLA emeritus professor Merrick Posnansky, will bring together a select group of leading archaeologists and historians of the Black Atlantic, most trained by Posnansky himself. Beyond recognizing Merrick's contribution to the archaeology of Africa and the Americas, our aim is to develop a better understanding of how archaeological sites in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States provide “grounds” for hypothesizing the presence and impact of regional symbolic systems and/or social networks. Particular emphasis will be placed on the development of Creole societies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) in relation to West-Central Africa and Europe.

Papers:
Conference Papers presented at the Clark Library will be posted below by March 23, and will remain accessible until April 17. Papers are provided as passworded acrobat documents. Registered participants can obtain the password by calling the Center on (310) 206-8552

Registration Deadline: March 26, 2009..

Please click here for a printable registration form.

Registration Fees: $25 per person; UC faculty & staff, students with ID: no charge* *Students should enclose a photocopy of their current ID with the registration form. Fees are not refundable and apply to full or partial attendance.

Complimentary lunch and other refreshments are provided to all registrants.

Please be aware that space at the Clark is limited and that registration closes when capacity is reached. No confirmation will be sent, but we will contact you if we receive your registration after we reach capacity.

Friday,
April 3rd

Program Schedule:

9:30 A.M.

10:00 A.M.

Welcome and Introduction

Candice Goucher, Washington State University, Vancouver
Memory of Iron:  Forging Black Atlantic History

Philip L. de Barros, Palomar College
How Far Inland Did the Arm of the Slave Trade Reach?  Evidence from the Bassar Region of Northern Togo

12:00 P.M.

Lunch

1:30 P.M.

J. Cameron Monroe, University of California, Santa Cruz
“In the belly of Dan”: Landscape, Power, and Urban Transformation in Precolonial Dahomey

Akin Ogundiran, University of North Carolina-Charlotte
Inventing Symbols, Constructing Self, Reproducing Community: On the Materiality of Culture in the Mid-Atlantic Age Yorubaland

François G. Richard, University of Chicago
Of Despotic Kings and Powerless Peasants? (Dis)Ambiguating Power in Siin (Senegal) during the Atlantic Era

Keynote Address

Christopher R. DeCorse, Syracuse University
West Africa after the Europeans: Change and Transformation in the Era of the Atlantic World

5:00 P.M.

Reception

Saturday, April 4th

9:30 A.M.

10:00 A.M.

Kenneth G. Kelly, University of South Carolina
Atlantic Networks in the African Diaspora:  Archaeological Research in French West Africa and the French West Indies

E. Kofi Agorsah, Portland State University
Formation and Transformation of Maroon Settlements in Suriname: Archaeological Strategies

Peter R. Schmidt, University of Florida
Archaeological Signatures for Spiritual Agency among Africans in the New World: The Pitfalls of Grab Bag Ethnology

12:30 P.M.

1:30 P.M.

Laurie A. Wilkie, University of California, Berkeley
American-Africans and African-Americans in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century and the Construction of Diaspora Identities

Douglas Armstrong, Syracuse University
Freedom on the Margins:  Archaeological Explorations of Free Black Settlements in the Danish West Indies