LCVS Public Lecture: 'Colonialism and the Deep History of Race'
What's happening?
A public lecture by the Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies (LCVS) Visiting Professor Pratik Chakrabarti, ‘Colonialism and the Deep History of Race’.
Speaker
Professor Pratik Chakrabarti is the National Endowment for the Humanities Cullen Chair in History & Medicine at the University of Houston. He is also the Visiting Professor for 2022 at the Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies.
Brief Description
The nineteenth century gave rise to georacialism when humans were associated with the deep history of the earth. Biological ideas of race had emerged from the late seventeenth century, particularly in the context of slavery and European colonial settlements in the tropics, which defined European ideas of race, climate, and labour. The talk traces how these gradually became linked to emerging ideas of earth histories and in turn colonial policies of settlement, mining, and state-building in the nineteenth century.
Living indigenous populations came to be seen as a distinct race who were designated as both biological and geological specimens, as descendants of primates and prehistoric humans. In South Asia, georacial ideas became subsumed within the dehumanization of the Indian caste system and agrarian economy, the thematic implications of which were adopted by Europeans. In contemporary everyday, idle and recurrent scientific references, certain populations, more than others, continue to be deemed intimate to nature and nonhumans.
These connections are ubiquitous and permeate our consciousness in diverse ways. The talk suggests that critiquing such georacialism requires writing alternative histories of humans, the earth, and politics.
Where?
Leeds Trinity University, Brownberrie Lane, Horsforth, Leeds LS18 5HD.
How can I book?
Please register your attendance via Eventbrite.
Further information?
For further details please email Reverend Professor Jane de Gay (J.deGay@leedstrinity.ac.uk)
Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies
The Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies, one of the oldest and most important Victorian Studies research centres in the country, celebrates its twentieth-five anniversary this year. It has been a key player in the establishment of our national professional body, the British Association of Victorian Studies, and the prestigious Journal of Victorian Culture, published by Oxford University Press.
The Centre runs a highly-regarded MA programme, hosts PhD and MbR students, and offers seminars and conferences, as well as an annual public lecture by a distinguished scholar of Victorian history, literature, or culture. We collaborate regularly with local heritage and cultural organisations, and play a central role in supporting the study of all things Victorian in the north of England.