STS Research Seminar - Dr Josie Gill (Bristol) - Weds 20th February 2019

On Wednesday 20th February, Dr Josie Gill (Bristol) will visit the department to give her talk "'Handle with Care': Literature, Archaeology, Slavery". The talk will begin at 4.30pm in Room 1.2, Malet Place Engineering Building. Refreshments will be available from 4pm.

Abstract:

This talk will consider the relationship between literary and bioarchaeological approaches to slavery, and how the methods and priorities of each discipline might inform the other to enhance our understanding of what it was like to be enslaved. Both bioarchaeologists and creative writers attempt to access the inner lives of enslaved people, yet there has been little interaction between these approaches. This talk offers an account of an interdisciplinary research project which brought together a literary scholar, two archaeological scientists and seven creative writers to explore how writing might not only communicate a history primarily understood through archaeological evidence, but could itself inform approaches to that evidence. It identifies two key themes which emerged from the project as ways of opening up, rather than claiming, the past: Conversation and Caring. These are themes which were also crucial to the success of the interdisciplinary process, as it was only through attention to our relationships with one other that we were able to begin to rethink the material basis of each of our disciplines