Decolonizing “Prehistory”: Deep Time and Topological Knowledge in the Americas

/ Termine

Decolonizing “Prehistory”: Deep Time and Topological Knowledge in the Americas

Veranstalter
DFG Project “Constructions of American Antiquity”, Rostock University, Prof. Dr. Gesa Mackenthun; Stefan Krause; Alexander Bräuer; Universität Rostock, Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Veranstaltungsort
Hotel Speicher am Ziegelsee, Speicherstr. 11
Ort
Schwerin
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
21.06.2018 - 23.06.2018
Website
https://www.iaa.uni-rostock.de/forschung/laufende-forschungsprojekte/american-antiquities-prof-mackenthun/conference-decolonizing-prehistory/
Von
Prof. Dr. Gesa Mackenthun

The history of the Americas in the centuries and millennia before the arrival of Columbus is a contested ground and will remain so as more and more Indigenous voices enter the scientific chorus and more and more evidence is discovered about the human presence in America before and after the last glacial period. This symposium seeks to shed light on the reasons for the intellectual and often emotional intensity which transforms the scientific research on the ‘prehistory’ of America into a veritable culture war. Why is it that the contestation of the Clovis First consensus sparks so much debate? How to explain the belligerence shown by the parties involved in determining the provenance and racial identity of human remains such as ‘Kennewick Man’? What are the cultural effects of new discoveries and insights about the American distant past, e.g. in the field of ancient DNA analysis? How does this new knowledge impact on the geographical perpective (local vs. global) on pre-Columbian history, making it more or less available for nationalist and imperialist narratives? Finally and perhaps most importantly, how can the various ‘scientific’ narratives of American deep history be brought into dialogue with indigenous, orally transmitted, knowledge archives of the past? While speculations about the distant past are enjoying remarkable publicity inside and outside of academia, the amount of emotional energy invested in these debates still begs explanation. The impossibility to explain past events that, in spite of all our rational and technical possibilities, cannot be known, creates fascination but also vexes the intellect. Attempts to reconstruct the distant past serve not only the advancement of science but also resonate with desires of a much less scientific nature (see above quote). These politics of scientific practice may turn out to reveal a stronger interest in place than in time. The symposium will investigate such (colonial) politics of science more generally and of reconstructions of the distant American past in particular. It invites its participants to read older and more recent constructions of the American distant past in the context of ideological and political discourses about territorial ownership and stewardship, ecology, landgrabbing, cultural and intellectual property, and identity formation.

Programm

Thursday, 21 June 2018

5:30 pm
Welcome by the Mayor of Schwerin, Dr. Rico Badenschier

Gesa Mackenthun: Introduction

6:30 pm Dinner

8 pm
Chair: Gesa Mackenthun

Keynote (via skype):
Competing Narratives of Ancestry in Donald Trump’s America: Personal DNA Testing, the “Ethno-State,” Native American Land Rights, and the Imperative for Scholarly Intervention
Annette Kolodny, University of Arizona, Tucson

Friday, 22 June 2018

9 am - 9:45 am
Chair: Alexander Bräuer

Yucatec “Maya” Historicity and Identity Constructions: The Case of Coba
Jessica Christie, East Carolina University, Greenville

9:50 am - 10:35 am
‘Scientific’ vs. Local Narratives About Pre-Hispanic Sites: Tulum as a Case Study
Mathieu Picas, University of Barcelona
Margarita Díaz-Andreu, University of Barcelona/ ICREA

10:35 am - 10:50 am Coffee

11 am - 11:45 am
Chair: Daniel L. Smail

“Born of the Soil": Demography's Roots and the Refusal of Oral Tradition
Christen Mucher, Smith College, Northampton, MA

11:50 am - 12:35 pm
Mammoth Cave, Poe, and Speculative (Pre)Histories
Melissa Gniadek, University of Toronto

12:35 pm - 2 pm Lunch

2 pm
Bus Transfer to Gross Raden: Presentation of Slavic Ceremonial Center and Archaeological Museum

Saturday, 23 June 2018

9:30 am - 10:30 am
Chair: Hartmut Lutz

Red Earth, White Lies, Sapiens, and the Deep Politics of Knowledge.
Phil Deloria, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

10:30 am - 10:50 am Coffee

10:50 am - 11:35 am
Chair: John Munro

Witnessing Catastrophe: Correlations between Catastrophic Paleoenvironmental Events and First Nations Oral Traditions in the Pacific Northwest
Rick Budhwa, Simon Fraser University, BC

11:40 am - 12:25 pm
Remembering Gi’was: Indigenous Landmark Legends and the Politics of American Antiquity
Gesa Mackenthun, University of Rostock

1 pm - 2:30 pm Lunch

2:30 pm - 3:15 pm
Chair: Stefan Krause

A Historiography of Indigenous Archaeology in British Columbia
Jeff Oliver, University of Aberdeen

3:20 pm - 4:05 pm
Prairies, Ice, and Oil: Settler Colonialism and Deep Time around the Southern Salish Sea
Coll Thrush, University of British Columbia, Vancouver

4:05 pm - 4:20 pm Coffee

4:20 pm - 5:05 pm
Chair: Susanne Lachenicht

Myth Making and Unmaking: Erasing and Creating the Sacred in Settler Colonial Strategies of Displacement.
Keith Carlson, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon

5:05 pm - 5:50 pm
Indigenous Peoples and the New Doctrine of ‘Discovery’: Bioarchaeology, Archaeogenomics, and the Narrative of “American Pre-History”
Rebecca Tsosie, University of Arizona, Tucson

6 pm Final Discussion

8 pm Dinner

Projektleitung: Prof. Dr. Gesa Mackenthun

Anmeldungen bitte an Stefan Krause: stefan.krause2@uni-rostock.de

Kontakt

Universität Rostock
Philosophische Fakultät
Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik

Nordamerikanische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft
August-Bebel-Str. 28
D 18055 Rostock

Prof. Dr. Gesa Mackenthun

Kontakt:
Stefan Krause
stefan.krause2@uni-rostock.de

Alexander Bräuer
alexander.braeuer@uni-rostock.de

https://www.iaa.uni-rostock.de/forschung/laufende-forschungsprojekte/american-antiquities-prof-mackenthun/conference-decolonizing-prehistory/
Redaktion
Veröffentlicht am
Autor(en)
Beiträger
Zitation ⇓