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From July 1-3, 2010, the DFG-project “Interdependencies of Black Emancipation Movements in North America and the Caribbean from the late 18th to the 20th century” at Erfurt University will be hosting a conference with the title “Being on the Move: Transfers, Emancipation and Formations of The Black Atlantic”. The conference will take place in Erfurt, Germany (Begegnungsstätte Kleine Synagoge) and is organized in cooperation with the Graduate School “Cultural Encounters and Discourses of Scholarship” (Rostock University).
African American emancipation struggles have influenced the histories of Atlantic communities while at the same time the Atlantic has shaped the histories of its people. The conference will concentrate on cultural exchanges within the Atlantic world and focus on various forms of transfers such as trading, the distribution of knowledge and the movements of individuals who crossed the waters, for example as merchants, political activists, slaves, travelers and migrants. From a theoretical and empirical perspective we seek to discuss how transatlantic transfers, emancipation, and identity constructions were interdependent: In which ways were transatlantic transfers constitutive elements for black emancipation movements of the 19th and 20th century? How did transfers and transatlantic contacts influence formations of identities? How did Atlantic networks operate with mechanisms of both inclusion and exclusion and shape notions of peripheries and centers within the Atlantic world?
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