The UBC Department of History Colloquium Series brings together scholars who are exploring important methodological, chronological, or geographical issues that challenge the frontiers of our discipline and contribute strongly to our collective discussions.
As part of the 2022/2023 Colloquium series, we are pleased to invite you to a talk by Prof. Olivette Otele (Ph.D., FRHistS, FLSW), Distinguished Professor of the Legacies and Memory of Slavery at SOAS, University of London.
Whether you choose to attend virtually or in-person, please register for the event. A light lunch will be available for in-person attendees who register in advance.
Please note this event is intended for the UBC History Department and graduate students from the Public Humanities Hub, UBC Political Science, UBC English Language & Literatures, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice, and the Peter A. Allard School of Law.
Talk Abstract
The histories of people of African descent we learnt in schools in Europe and North America usually start with the slave trade, or worst yet, only with the abolition of slavery. In Britain and France, they tend to begin with post world wars migrations from people from the Global South as former colonized communities.
This presentation proposes the stories of people of African descent and their encounters with people of European descent have a much broader lifespan. It begins by examining the delineation between Europe and Africa as stable entities. Though African European stories were not all born in Ancient Rome, this presentation takes Ancient Rome as a starting point to open up the discussion to the notion of sacralization and hierarchization of histories. It also analyzes the links between the gaze and the memorialization.
Why do we need to refer to Ancient Rome as the birth of European civilization? What does taking refuge in Ancient Rome and 18th century artistic creations teach us about racialization and imperial nostalgia? Beauty and exoticization in paintings of grand masters went hand in hand with the denigration of Black bodies in European societies, especially from the 17th century onwards. This presentation looks to the histories of people of African descent through European Arts in order to try and understand history writing processes and how hegemonic discourses that are seemingly inclusive can hide or reproduce inequalities and highlight an imbalance of power.
Speaker Biography
Olivette Otele
Olivette Otele (she/her/hers), Ph.D., FRHistS, FLSW, is a Distinguished Professor of the Legacies and Memory of Slavery at SOAS, University of London. Her area of research is colonial, post-colonial history and memory studies. Otele holds a Ph.D. in History from Université Paris La Sorbonne, France and received an honorary doctorate in Law from Concordia University in Canada. She is a Fellow and former Vice President of the Royal Historical Society. She was a judge of the International Man Booker Prize, has written numerous scholarly papers and books, and is also a regular contributor to the press, television and radio programmes, including the BBC, Times Magazine, The Guardian, GQ, Elle Magazine, and others. Otele is also a broadcaster and a film and documentaries consultant. Her latest books include an edited volume, Post-conflict memorialization: Missing Memorials, Absent Bodies (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2021) and African Europeans: An Untold History (Basic Books, 2022).