Thursday 4 May to Saturday 6 May 2006

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Organised by the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies

The theme and focus of this conference departs from a question posed by Paul Gilroy in _The Black Atlantic_: “What of Nella Larsen’s relationship to Denmark, where George Padmore was held in jail during the early 1930s and which was also the home base of his banned paper the Negro Worker, circulated across the world by its supporters in the Colonial Seamen’s Association?” Over three days, “Denmark and the Black Atlantic” will explore these and other questions regarding the role of Denmark and its former Caribbean colonies, the Danish West Indies (now the Virgin Islands), in the Black Atlantic world. The conference also offers the opportunity to assess and advance recent developments in both international scholarship and Danish public culture which have focused attention on different facets of Denmark’s role in Black Atlantic history. In 1997, George Hutchinson overturned the scholarly consensus that Nella Larsen, the biracial, U.S.-born daughter of a Danish mother and Danish West Indian father, never visited Denmark (despite Larsen’s own claims to the contrary) by disclosing archival evidence of Larsen’s transatlantic travels between New York and Copenhagen. In early 2005, the Danish public television channel DR2 aired a documentary series, Slavernes Slægt, which traced the mixed-racial heritage of contemporary Danes, in the process sparking renewed media and public interest in Denmark’s colonial and slave-trading history. In April 2005, a delegation from the Virgin Islands visited Denmark to discuss the legacy of this history; discussions regarding reparations, memorials, and other projects are ongoing.

Keynote Speakers:

Professor George Hutchinson (Indiana University), author of _The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White_ (Harvard UP, 1995) and _From the Shadows: A New Life of Nella Larsen_ (forthcoming, Harvard UP, 2006)

Candace Allen, author of the novel _Valaida_ (Virago, 2004)

Alex Frank Larsen, journalist and director of DR2’s documentary series _Slavernes Slægt_ (2005)

TBC: Historian of Danish West Indies/Virgin Islands

Conference events will include:
 An opening reception and concert at Copenhagen Jazzhouse
 Keynote speakers George Hutchinson, talking about Nella Larsen and Denmark; Candace Allen, reading from and discussing her novel Valaida (2004) about African-American jazz musician Valaida Snow and her imprisonment in Denmark during World War II; and Alex Frank Larsen, discussing his documentary series Slavernes Slægt
 A walking tour of Nella Larsen’s Copenhagen

CALL FOR PAPERS

This call for papers invites proposals for both individual presentations and collective panels that relate to the overall conference theme. Subjects might include, but are not confined to, the following:

 Denmark’s role in the transatlantic slave trade
 The colonial history of the Danish West Indies
 Slave and labour revolts in the Danish West Indies (e.g., the 1733 St. John slave rebellion; the 1848 “emancipation revolt”; the 1878 St. Croix “Fireburn” revolt)
 Comparative approaches to New World slavery in the Danish West Indies and elsewhere (the British West Indies, the United States, etc.)
 Anti-slavery activism in Denmark
 The sale of the Danish West Indies/the Virgin Islands to the United States in 1917
 Comparative approaches to Danish and U.S. power in the Danish West Indies/the Virgin Islands
 The U.S. occupation of the Virgin Islands, 1917-1936
 Danish West Indian/Virgin Islanders’ relationships and/or visits to Denmark
 The debate over Danish reparations to the Virgin Islands
 Political activists from the Danish West Indies/Virgin Islands (e.g., Edward Blyden, Hubert Harrison, Arthur Schomburg, Frank Crosswaith, Elizabeth Hendricksen, Ashley Totten)
 Virgin Islanders in New York during the Harlem Renaissance (e.g., Casper Holstein, Hubert Harrison, etc.)
 The civil rights movement in the Virgin Islands
 George Padmore and Denmark
 Reconsideration of writing by Danes about the Danish West Indies and/or transatlantic slave trade (e.g., Thorkild Hansen)
 Alex Frank Larsen/DR2’s documentary series Slavernes Slægt (2005)
 Representations of Denmark in African-American literature (e.g., Larsen’s Quicksand, Richard Wright’s “Big Black Good Man”, Candace Allen’s Valaida)
 Nella Larsen and Denmark
 William H. Johnson (African-American artist) and Denmark
 Representations of blacks and/or “mulattoes” in Danish art history
 Racial primitivism in Danish culture
 Transatlantic musical migrations in Danish culture
 African-American vaudeville in early twentieth-century Copenhagen
 Jazz Age Copenhagen
 African-American jazz musicians in Denmark (e.g., Louis Armstrong, Ben Webster, Valaida Snow, Dexter Gordon, etc.)
 Danish jazz music
 Reggae in Denmark (Danish concerts by Jamaican artists; Danish performers, etc.)
 The influence of African-American and/or transnational hip-hop culture in Denmark
 Danish hip-hop
 Visual and/or textual representations of African-American life in Danish culture (e.g., Jacob Holdt’s Amerikanske Billeder/American Pictures, Lars Von Trier’s Manderlay)
 African-American and/or Caribbean culture in Danish travel writing

The main language of the conference will be English, but proposals for papers/panels in Danish are welcome. Individual papers should be a maximum of 20 minutes in length; 90 minutes will be assigned to each panel, with three speakers each and half an hour for discussion. However, we also welcome proposals for other, less conventional presentations, and will do our best to fit them into the conference schedule. If there is sufficient interest, we will consider extending the conference to Sunday 7 May.

Please send individual paper and collective panel proposals to the conference organising committee at bone@hum.ku.dk by 1 December 2005. Enquiries can be directed to the same address.

Conference costs are currently being finalised but we anticipate that the basic registration fee will be approximately 600 Danish kroner, with optional extras of 150 Danish kroner for the opening concert in Copenhagen Jazzhouse and 60 Danish kroner for the Nella Larsen walking tour.

The “Denmark and the Black Atlantic” organising committee is:

Dr. Martyn Bone
Anne Dvinge
Dr. Justin Edwards
Dr. Carl Pedersen
(All Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Copenhagen)