VENUE: Bremen, Germany
ZOOM: https://uni-bremen.zoom.us/my/uneasyneighbours
The conference explores ideas, experiences, and memories of neighbours and neighbourhoods in the colonial city.
It brings together historians, sociologists, and urban scholars of the Mediterranean, sub-Saharan Africa, and South East Asia to discuss new avenues in the research of living together and living apart in colonial cities.
By exploring the neighbourhood as a site of encounter, conflict, and exchange, this conference moves beyond the lingering dichotomies of colonial urban history: fragmentation vs. encounter, agency vs. coercion, coexistence vs. conflict. Instead, we aim to capture the ambivalence of being neighbours in the colonial city: a fragile, at times tense, at times amicable modus vivendi.
Organised by Avner Ofrath, Norman Aselmeyer, and Cornelius Torp.
In co-operation with the University of Bremen, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and Haus der Wissenschaft Bremen.
Please join us on site or online via https://uni-bremen.zoom.us/my/uneasyneighbours.
PROGRAM
Day 1: 21 July 2022
Venue: Haus der Wissenschaft, Bremen, Olbers-Saal
10.00–10.30 am (CET)
Welcome and Registration
(Haus der Wissenschaft, 2nd Floor)
--
OPENING LECTURE
10.30–11.00 am (CET)
Avner Ofrath (University of Bremen)
Urban Violence and Coexistence at the Twilight of Empire
--
PANEL 1: GOVERNING URBAN SPACES
11.00 am – 12.30 pm (CET)
Jennifer Hart (Wayne State University)
Ideal Housing: The Politics of Building and Living in 20th Century Accra
Javed Iqbal Wani (Ambedkar University Delhi)
Regulating ‘Hooligans’ and ‘Mawaalis’ in the City: Communalism, Collective Action and the Politics of Public Order in Late Colonial India
Geert Castryck (Leipzig University)
From “Ethnic” to Spatial: Overcoming Inter-Community Conflict through the Reorganization of Neighbourhood Administration in Colonial Ujiji (1930s–1940s)
Chair: Norman Aselmeyer (University of Bremen)
--
12.30–1.30 pm (CET)
Lunch Break
--
PANEL 2: PLACES OF ENCOUNTER
1.30–3.00 pm (CET)
Yasmina El Chami (Anglia Ruskin University)
‘Collective’ Colonialism: Missionary Competition as Sectarian Project in Nineteenth-Century Beirut
Michael Yeo (Nanyang Technological University)
Colonial Towns in the Periphery: The Social Worlds of Sandakan and Jesselton, c. 1900s–1930s
Robert Pascoe and Chris McConville (Victoria University)
Bazaar Lives: Communities, Commodities and Urban Reform in Calcutta
Chair: Julia Hauser (University of Kassel)
--
3.00–3.30 pm (CET)
Coffee Break
--
PANEL 3: CONFLICT, PROTEST, AND CONTROL
3.30–5.00 pm (CET)
Halimat Titilola Somotan (Carnegie Mellon University)
Property Disputes and Everyday Histories in Epetedo, Colonial Lagos, 1927–1946
Sugata Nandi (West Bengal State University)
From Unity to Conflict: Nationalism and Communalism in Neighbourhoods of Colonial Calcutta, 1919–1926
Norman Aselmeyer (University of Bremen)
Mau Mau in Nairobi: Urban Networks of Unrest
Chair: Cornelius Torp (University of Bremen)
--
5.00–5.30 pm (CET)
Coffee Break
--
KEYNOTE LECTURE
5.30–6.30 pm (CET)
Michael Goebel (Freie Universität Berlin)
Did Colonialism Segregate Cities?
--
Day 2: 22 July 2022
Venue: Haus der Wissenschaft, Bremen, Olbers-Saal
PANEL 4: CITIES AND CITIZENS
9.30–11.00 am (CET)
Madhu (University of Delhi)
Empowered or Exploited: Migrant Women and Mechanisms of Control in Colonial Cities
Mikko Toivanen (University of Warsaw)
Staging a Colonial Capital: Managing Ethnic Diversity through Urban Culture and Public Spectacle in Singapore and Batavia, 1860–1900
Larissa Kopytoff (University of South Florida)
Of Boundaries and Banlieues: Citizens, Subjects, and Neighbours in Senegal’s Four Communes
Chair: Julia Lossau (University of Bremen)
--
11.00–11.30 am (CET)
Coffee Break
--
PANEL 5: OLD NEIGHBOURHOODS, NEW NEIGHBOURHOODS
11.30 am – 1.00 pm (CET)
Elia Etkin (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Neighbours Living Together and Apart: Intercommunal Dynamics in a Jewish Neighbourhood in Mandatory Palestine
Tim Livsey (Northumbria University)
Nigerians and the Ikoyi ‘European Reservation’ in the 1920s and 1930s
Monia Bousnina (Université Sétif I)
Coexistence in the Colonial City of Algeria: The Case of the Harat in Sétif
Chair: Nora Lafi (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin)
--
1.00–2.00 pm (CET)
Lunch Break
--
PANEL 6: LOST IN TRANSITION?
2.00–3.30 pm (CET)
Rila Mukherjee (University of Hyderabad)
Re-Orienting the Bengal Delta (ca. 1690–1990)
Orit Ouaknine-Yekutieli (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Rage Against the Machine in the Mellah of Fes
Nora Lafi (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin)
Traumatic Transitions and Forms of Popular Resilience in a Neighbourhood of Tunis from Colonisation to the Aftermaths of WWII
Chair: Avner Ofrath (University of Bremen)
--
3.30-4.00 pm (CET)
Closing Discussion: Colonial Cities and Neighbour Relations
Contact Info:
Dr Norman Aselmeyer, University of Bremen
Contact Email: norman.aselmeyer@uni-bremen.de
0 Replies