Journées d'études : "Ottoman Trans-Saharan Slave Trade Legacies in the Aegean. Historical and Ethnographical Approaches"

THURSDAY 30TH OCTOBER

9:30 Presentation and Introduction

Organising Committee
AFRICANS’ ENSLAVEMENT IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Geography Auditorium – 10am-12pm

10:00 The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade's Significance in the Ottoman Domains and the Place of Enslaved Africans in the Ottoman Society (16th-18th centuries)
Hayri Gökşin Özkoray (Université Aix-Marseille)

10:30 Reconsidering the Ottoman Slave Trade during the Age of Revolutions. Invisible Effects, Visible Changes
Leonidas Moiras (Democritus University of Thrace)

11:00 The Ottoman-African Diaspora
Yannis Spyropoulos (Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Rethymnon)

11:30 Discussion
Eleni Gara (University of the Aegean)

OTTOMAN LEGACIES AND “BLACKNESS” IN TURKEY AND GREECE

Geography Video Conference Room C – 5pm-6.30pm

5:00 Blackness in an “unexpected place”: The legacy of African slavery in the Late Ottoman and Early Republican period
Ezgi Çakmak (Towson University) [online]

5:30 A colour without curse? Dark skin in Macedonia-Western Thrace Kali Argyriadis (IRD, Paris Cité University, URMIS)

6:00 Discussion
Ary Gordien (CNRS, Paris Cité University, URMIS)

SESSION 1

SESSION 2

SESSION 3

DISRUPTED AUTOCHTONIES

Geography Video Conference Room C – 6.30pm-8pm

6:30 Arapades/Arapides in the Greek state: The forgotten communities of Old Greece and the New Lands
Lambros Baltsiotis (Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences)

7:00 Kinship and patronymic systems within indigenous communities of African descent in the Aegean
Lydia Zeghmar (Toulouse Jean Jaurès University)

7:30 Discussion
Effie Plexoussaki (University of the Aegean)

FRIDAY 31ST OCTOBER

IMAGINED AFRICA, AFRICAN EXPERIENCES

Geography Video Conference Room C – 9.30am-12pm

9:30 Inventing ‘Africa’: the Western Gaze and its Discourses Emilios Tsekenis (University of the Aegean)

10:00 About the participatory Exhibition “Africa Amongst Us” Sofia Chandaka (Benaki Museum) [online]

10:30 “It’s like we came from outer space”. Racialisation within Turkey’s Othering Regimes
Armand Aupiais (Paris Cité University)

11:00 Shades of Black and Islamic Piety in Postcolonial Sudan: Echoes of a Slave- holding Past reaching Distant Shores
Gerassimos Makris (Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences) [online]

11:30 Discussion
Pinelopi Topali (University of the Aegean)

LABOUR & POST-SLAVERY IN POST-OTTOMAN TURKEY

Geography Video Conference Room C – 12.30pm-14.30pm

12:30 The Afterlives of Slavery: Racialized and Gendered Labor in Post-Ottoman Turkey
Ayşegül Kayagil (SOAS, London)

13:00 Turkey’s new serfs and old servants? The Afro-Turks and the economy of theKemalist Republic
Alexandre Toumarkine (INALCO, Paris)

13:30 Discussion
Armand Aupiais (Paris Cité University)

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

Kali Argyriadis (Paris Cité University)
Armand Aupiais (Paris Cité University)
Eleni Gara (University of the Aegean)
Effie Plexoussaki (University of the Aegean) Pinelopi Topali (University of the Aegean) Lydia Zeghmar (Toulouse Jean Jaurès University)

SESSION 4

SESSION 5

14.00 Joint Discussion

 

Tavla Playing Zeybek – Osman Hamdi 1890

SYMPOSIUM PRESENTATION

Current academic studies show a (re)emerging interest in decentring research on the history of slave trades and its consequences outside and/or beyond the Atlantic worlds. Since the turn of the century, and increasingly in the 2010s, research has documented the history of slavery, as well as the related social and intellectual genealogies of othering processes in the Middle East and North Africa. This empirical and theoretical enrichment has improved our knowledge of the specificities of Ottoman trans-Saharan slave trade within the frame of slavery in the Muslim Worlds.

The Greece-Turkey interface, structured by the confessional institution of otherness and autochthony, and disrupted by the rivalry of Greek and Turkish nationalism, remains relatively understudied in this research field.

Our international workshop, Ottoman Trans-Saharan Slave Trade Legacies in the Aegean, held at the University of Mytilene, aims to engage with the “Aegean case” as an opportunity to interrogate the global histories of Africans’ enslavements and challenge divisions between Western and Eastern histories, North and “Sub-Saharan” Africa, Christian and Muslim slavery.

How is the legacy of this plural and sensitive history manifested locally? How is it silenced or expressed, understood or interpreted in different ways? Above all, how can we study it while addressing the need for singular historical narratives, avoiding the pitfall of ethnographic predation and negotiating with the diversity of identity-based statements?

The workshop will consist of four sessions dealing respectively with 1. Africans’ Enslavement in the Ottoman Empire; 2. Ottoman Legacies and “Blackness” in Turkey; 3.African Descent and Muslim Roma in the Aegean; 4.Imagined Africa, African Experiences; 5. Labour &Post-Slavery in Post-ottoman Turkey.

We will pay special attention to the description of vernacular practices and representations that bear witness to the diversity of local configurations inherited from this history.

A Mytilène (Grèce).
Les communications se feront en présentiel, mais certaines sessions auront lieu en hybride.

Le comité d'organisation :
Kali Argyriadis
Armand Aupiais
Eleni Gara
Effie Plexoussaki
Pinelopi Topali
Lydia Zeghmar