This MA seminar is a reading course that explores themes regarding unfree mobilities, anti-slavery, and empire across European empires of the 19th century. Temporally the seminar starts with the abolitions of the age of revolutions in the US and Haitian Revolutions (ie. emancipation or abolition in the British and French Empires) and ends with World War II. The nature of indentured and convict labor gives this seminar a regional focus on the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. By centering human unfree mobilities (indentured laborers, refugees, formerly enslaved people, convicts, and sailors), the seminar is able to bring to light a number of themes such as transport infrastructure, the relationship between colonies and the metropole, the role of mobility controls, and the connections between anti-slavery ideology and imperialism.
We will also combine the seminar with a guided tour of Leipzig’s memorial for forced labor under the NS regime
- Trainer/in: Megan Maruschke