The Working Group on Comparative Slavery (Afro-Latin American Research Institute at Harvard University and The Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh) invite you to submit an abstract for the international conference Plantation Societies in Comparative Perspective at the University of Pittsburgh on October 14-15, 2022.
The goal of the conference is twofold: complexify the idea of a “plantation society” by bringing together scholars studying slavery in different spaces, times, fields, and theoretical frameworks; discuss methodological perspectives (comparative, transnational, transimperial) that can help build towards a collaborative approach. We welcome submissions from scholars working beyond Atlantic frameworks, approaches that compare two or more plantation spaces, compare non-plantation sites of slavery with plantations, or study plantation-related themes in one site that can be compared with other papers via conference discussions.
Potential themes include but are not limited to:
- Law/Violence/Punishment
- Commodities/Labor Regimes
- Manumission
- Race/Gender
- Resistance
- Slave Trades
- Indigenous Populations
- Post-emancipation/Memory
- Visual Arts/Architecture
- Archaeology/Material Cultures
Abstracts should be sent by July 15 and the final paper by October 1 to plantation.societies@gmail.com. Both abstracts and papers may be submitted in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. Preference will be given to in-person presentations.
The conference will also honor the memory and legacy of Professor Ricardo Henrique Salles, who passed away in November 2021. He was a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and made key contributions to the scholarship of 19th-century Brazilian history, most notably in the fields of slavery, elite formation, and national identity.