The Production of Knowledge about Extra-European Areas in Central European Academic Worlds during the “Age of Extremes”

Workshop at the Centre for Advanced Study (ZHS-Zentrum für Höhere Studien)
University of Leipzig, Germany

December 15 – 17, 2006 (Deadline for proposals: October 15th 2006)

In the course of the 20th century the study of world regions like Africa and Latin America was established in European universities and other academic institutions. Though in some cases the origins of this European academic interest in Extra-European regions lay even further back into the past, it was during the 20th century that major centres were founded and a whole culture of “area studies” emerged.

Our workshop forms part of a joint research project of the universities of Hamburg and Leipzig funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG-Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) investigating knowledge production about Africa and Latin America in the humanities since the 1940ies focusing on outstanding locations for these studies. The development of the area studies on Africa and Latin America in some German centres like Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne and Leipzig forms one focus of this project, but it is designed to incorporate the results into a broader comparative framework of similar or alternative developments in other European countries especially in Czechia, France, Hungary and Poland.

To put it in one phrase: This workshop asks for decisive characteristics of the emergence and further formation of academic studies on Latin America and Africa in the Humanities in universities and other academic institutions at locations like Budapest, Prague, Szeged and Warsaw. Our theoretical framework was stimulated by Pierre Bourdieu’s design of research about the development of academic fields. According to this we do not believe that academics working in the area studies on Africa and Latin America were simple executives of political, economic or other non-academic interests, but we do not believe neither that it makes sense to analyze the historical development of the different fields of the area studies ignoring economic, social, political, and cultural contexts in which they have been embedded. Our special interest are the historical disciplines, but the workshop will include other disciplines of the humanities as well.

We especially ask for papers which address the following questions or questions related to these topics: When and how have the most important centres for African and Latin American studies been founded? What were the driving forces inside and outside of the academic world? Which were the most important academic disciplines forging the formation of area studies about Africa and Latin America? What were the towering figures and to which transregional, transdisciplinary and transnational networks have they been linked? What were their major contributions to the field? What were their personal linkages to the area they dedicated their studies to? What kind of study programs were developed and which functions did they fulfill? What were the major periodicals and publication series related to this process? Can any generational schemes be detected in the history of the locations under consideration? Are there long term continuities and which major fractures did affect them? How did inaugural motives relate to the results actually achieved? Etc. Papers must conform to the overall theme and/or the sub-themes. For more information on the general investigation project, of which this workshop is a part, visit our website and that of the respective DFG-program:
(http://wwwm.uni-leipzig.de/zhs/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=102&Itemid=364&lang=german; http://spp1143.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/site/lang__de/3962/default.aspx).

Deadline for the abstracts of the proposals (not more than 1000 words): 2006-10-15. Ten papers will be accepted. For the invited speakers travel costs will be returned and accommodation will be granted. Final versions of the presented papers should be submitted until April 2007 and will (after evaluation through the planning committee) be published in a volume in autumn of the same year. Papers in the English language will be preferred. Other languages are not necessarily excluded.

Planning Committee
Horst Pietschmann (Köln)
Matthias Middell (Leipzig)
Andreas Eckert (Hamburg)
Frank Hadler (Leipzig)
Felix Brahm (Hamburg)
Jochen Meissner (Leipzig)

For further information contact: Jochen Meissner, Zentrum für Höhere Studien, Emil-Fuchs-Str. 1, 04105 Leipzig, meissner@uni-leipzig.de