Autumn Update 2023
Welcome to this Autumn update from the Medicine and the Making of Race project. We had a fantastic start to the new academic year with our conference ‘Christianity and Racemaking in the Early Modern Atlantic World’, devised by MMoR team member Eli Cumings. The conference, exploring the complex entanglement of Christianity and racemaking in the early modern era, welcomed a diverse, interdisciplinary group of speakers across two days. With seventeen panellists and two keynote speakers, it presented a wonderful opportunity to learn from and be in conversation with a range of brilliant scholars exploring race and religion across various geographies and time periods. You can read Eli’s full write-up of the conference here.
Looking back to the summer, we were so pleased with the success of our Archives, Slavery & Race-Making Summer School. The 5-day summer school welcomed 12 participants who enjoyed masterclasses from leading scholars including Diana Paton, Stephanie Smallwood, Farah Karim-Cooper, Alexandre White and Tamara Walker. It was a fantastic week of thoughtful and generative discussion with an energising and exciting cohort of early career scholars, whose work in progress was a joy to hear. You can read more about the week in participant Amalia Levi’s blog post here.
September Conference
July Summer School
In October Hannah gave her seminar ‘Medicine, the Archive and the Making of Slavery in Early Modern Barbados’ at the IHR, and is looking forward to contributing to the ‘sciences and the historical construction of authority’ seminar series at Bologna University on the 5th December. Hannah and Eli are also eagerly preparing for two panels at RSA Chicago in March next year.
We have two project events coming up: a reading group on November 23rd titled ‘The Politics of Pity in Early Modern Europe Reading Group’ which will welcome interdisciplinary early modernists interested in the history of emotions, particularly sympathy, empathy, compassion, and pity, to read and discuss relevant source material. Then on February 27th we will be hosting a reading group on Thomas Browne and the role of skin colour between religion, science, and medicine in the seventeenth century, with Prof Kevin Killeen. Interested participants for either group are invited to contact mmor@kcl.ac.uk.
Hannah speaking at October IHR seminar
We would like to draw your attention to our new Autumn blog series, featuring more blogs exploring sources related to the history of medicine, slavery & racemaking. The series was kicked off with a post from Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh on 'Early modern racialisation in southern Africa'. We have since published blogs from Carmel Ferragud and Sarah-Maria Schober, and we’re looking forward to three more this term from Zachary Dorner, Vicki Heath and Teresa Goetl. Blogs are published every other week on a Monday, keep your eyes out for the remainder of the series! And a reminder that our summer series is available to read on our website at any time. All blogs can be found here.
Finally, take a look at Hannah’s news item on our visit to Cambridge to see the exhibit ‘The Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance’ at the Fitzwilliam Museum. This visit also included a very exciting introduction the project’s newest affiliate member, baby Anton! Huge congratulations to our team member Carolin, who is now on maternity leave.