At Home in Empire: Colonial Experiences of Intimacy and Mobility
A one-day interdisciplinary conference to be held on Saturday 13th March 2021
Keynote Speaker – Dr Kate Smith (University of Birmingham)
While we hope to hold this conference as a face-to-face event , At Home in Empire may need to be held virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We will keep you updated as developments take place.
What did “home” look like to men, women and children from London to Kingston to Calcutta? The aim of this conference is to bring together research across the fields of history, literature, geography, sociology, gender and queer studies and the heritage sector to reveal stories about the lived experiences of empire. Taking this interdisciplinary approach, we hope to advance new conversations about interracial relationships, lifecycles, and what it meant to belong against the backdrop of imperialism.
In his 1997 article ‘Not at Home in Empire’, Ranajit Guha explored the ‘uncanny’ experience of empire for white officers in India, proposing that colonial life was one marred by a sense of anxiety. Revisiting this argument, this conference seeks to reconsider the relationships between home and empire, bringing together researchers across the humanities and heritage sectors to ask new questions about the family, colonial childhoods, gender and race. Reflecting on homemaking as a practice of resistance, as well as a space marked by colonial violence and racism, this conference asks how we can explore the varied meanings of home in empire? We encourage contributors to approach home as both a material reality and imagined space, bringing these different conceptualizations together to discuss the ways in which colonised and colonising subjects navigate imperial geographies.
Our core themes of intimacy and mobility are intended to … READ MORE