Forwarded message from Jane Ellison, WISE conference organiser 
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CALL FOR PAPERS

Slavery: Unfinished Business

An International Interdisciplinary Conference to be held in Hull 16-19

May, 2007

 

Closing date for proposals: 30 Nov 06

 

The University of Hull, through its newly established Wilberforce

Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE), intends to

mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807

by hosting a conference entitled Slavery. Unfinished Business in Hull

16-19 May 2007.

 

Hull is the birthplace of William Wilberforce, the Parliamentary leader

of the British antislavery movement, who in alliance with Thomas

Clarkson, Olaudah Equiano and those who fought slavery from within, led

the campaign that succeeded in convincing Parliament to outlaw the

British slave trade.This marked the beginning of an international

crusade against slavery that ultimately resulted in the formal outlawing

of slavery worldwide. But two hundred years on from the abolition of the

British slave trade, slavery and other forms of coerced labour continue

to blight millions of lives.

Slave trafficking, child labour, forced prostitution and other abuses of

human rights, according to some authorities, have increased in the late

twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in the context of

globalisation and widening differentials in wealth.The emancipation

movement still has unfinished business.

 

The WISE conference will bring together scholars, educators, heritage

practitioners, policy influencers and policy makers to consider both

historical and contemporary aspects of slavery, emancipation and human

rights.Three sub-themes for the conference have been identified.These

are:

the past and the present;movement and identity; and the boundaries of

freedom and coercion. The agenda for each theme is open, but we expect a

healthy mix of disciplinary approaches and of basic and applied research

as well as a wide coverage of historical and contemporary forms of

slavery and emancipation issues. We would welcome suggestions for panels

of up to four papers as well as proposals for individual papers that

address one or more of the sub-themes.We also welcome proposals for

panels that bring together academics and non-academics.We anticipate

holding up to three sets of parallel sessions per day, each set

comprising up to five or six panels.

Some sessions or panels may be primarily historical, others more

contemporary or policyrelated in focus and yet others a mix of various

disciplines in the humanities, sciences and social sciences.We intend to

introduce each day of the conference with a keynote address.

 

The conference will be the occasion for the premiere of a number of new

pieces of work, including poetry reading and a short piece by the

composer Alastair Borthwick on a Wilberforce theme.

 

The closing date for proposals, whether for papers or for panels (the

latter preferably with a chair person) is 30 November 2006. We

anticipate finalising the conference programme by 31 December 2006.

 

Please send proposals in the first instance to Jane Ellison, WISE

conference organiser at [log in to unmask] Anyone wishing to discuss

a proposal prior to submission should contact David Richardson (Director

of WISE), or Michael Turner or Gary Craig (Associate Directors) at

[log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; and [log in to unmask]

respectively.

 

WISE was formally opened on 6 July 2006 by HE The President of Ghana,

John Agyekum Kufuor. The patron of WISE is Archbishop Emeritus Desmond

Tutu. The May 2007 conference will be the third in a sequence of four

conferences with which WISE is associated between its opening and August

2007. For details of the other conferences and for information on WISE

see www.hull.ac.uk/wise