GRSJ is proud to support the upcoming International Conference “Coloniality, Race, Punishment and Reparation in the Americas” being held in São Paulo, Brazil, November 27-30, 2024. The conference is being held both virtually and on location at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo (IEA-USP), Brazil.
Conference co-organizer, Diana Mendes Machado da Silva, is currently a visiting scholar at UBC (hosted by GRSJ faculty associate, Dr. Handel Wright Director of Centre for Culture, Identity & Education (CCIE); Deputy Head, EDST, Department of Educational Studies).
About
The purpose of the Conference is to expand debates and reflections on the intersection between coloniality, race, punishment and reparation with a transnational and interdisciplinary approach, which demands considering the connections between past and present and the similarities and differences between distinct national experiences in the
Americas. We are interested in understanding the making of systems of punishment in the Americas, based on one shared experience of colonization and racialization of national populations. What justifies the geographic scope is the historical experience of the Americas and the legacy of European colonialism, slavery, the brutality against indigenous populations, and the fact that this continent became a “metropolitan purgatory”, in the words of historian Laura de Mello e Souza. In this sense, the experience of plantation slavery, for example in Brazil and the USA, but also in other regions of the Americas, such as the Antilles or the Guiana plateau, influenced not only the making of racial hierarchies, but also the heart of the legal-penal system in these countries.
How can we decolonize and de-racialize punitive systems in the Americas? How can we repair violations and injustices
committed in the name of the legal or punitive apparatus in the Americas? These are some of the questions we intend to explore at the Conference “Coloniality, raciality, punishment and reparation in the Americas, 19th and 21st centuries”.
Call for proposals
The four days of the conference will offer keynotes, round tables, working groups (WGs)
and mini-courses. A call working group and short course proposals is now open. In-person participation is preferred but hybrid panels will be considered. Priority given to collective proposals gathering scholars and non-scholars and the participation of political activists is encouraged. Working languages: Portuguese, Spanish, English, and French.
Working groups proposal deadline: May 15, 2024
Mini-courses proposal deadline: July 15, 2024
