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Faculty Seminar Series presented by John Thabiti Willis, Associate Professor of African History at The Africa Institute presents his research titled, “Using Geographic Information Systems to Map and Analyze the Itineraries of Enslaved People Working and Seeking Freedom in the Gulf, 1925-1938” on Monday, 20 February 2023 (3:00 pm GST) at The Africa Institute Library (Click here for map).
This presentation uses geospatial methods and tools to map and analyze evidence from British manumission records that document the journeys of more than 200 people who fled from nearby communities to seek freedom from slavery in Bahrain, Muscat, and Sharjah between 1925 and 1938.
These records document recollections of the experience of capture and enslavement; the gender, age, family life, and place of origin of the enslaved; and the number of masters (owners) enslaved people experienced and the years of their enslavement. They also facilitate the study of these and other features of cultural, demographic, and economic life in the Gulf during that time. By assigning geographic coordinates to the places named in the records, Professor Willis maps the journeys with a focus on identifying and analyzing patterns. Given that most of the records document the journeys of men, he is interested in the correlation between gender and space in terms of where slave merchants trafficked and sold enslaved people and where the enslaved applied for manumission.
John Thabiti Willis, Associate Professor of African History at The Africa Institute, holds a Ph.D. in History from Emory University, USA. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies (2008-2010). He has been working as an associate professor of African history and director of Africana Studies at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, U.S.A.
He is a scholar of the social and cultural history of Africa in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds. His Ph.D. thesis and first book focused on the history and politics of masquerade performances and the institutions that organized them among the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria from precolonial to modern times.
His 2018 book, Masquerading Politics: Kinship, Gender, and Ethnicity in a Yoruba Town, Otta, 1774-1928, demonstrates how institutions that used ritual masquerade both reflected and shaped changing political and economic relations during the rise and fall of West African empires, Atlantic slavery, the spread of Islam, and the establishment of Christian missions and British colonialism. It has earned recognition as a finalist for the 2019 Best Book Prize (formerly known as the Herskovits award) by the African Studies Association and recently won the 2020 Yoruba Studies Book Prize, which honors the best books on Yoruba people and their culture over a three-year period.
The faculty seminar will be moderated by Amy Niang, Associate Professor of Political Science, The Africa Institute.
Through these lectures and workshops, The Africa Institute reaffirms its mission as a center for the study and research of Africa and its diaspora, and its commitment to the training of a new generation of critical thinkers in African and African Diaspora studies.
The seminar will be in English.
The session is free and open to the public. Registration is mandatory, Click here to book your place.
Faculty Seminar Series presented by John Thabiti Willis, Associate Professor of African History at The Africa Institute presents his research titled, “Using Geographic Information Systems to Map and Analyze the Itineraries of Enslaved People Working and Seeking Freedom in the Gulf, 1925-1938” on Monday, 20 February 2023 (3:00 pm GST) at The Africa Institute Library (Click here for map).
Faculty Seminar Series presented by John Thabiti Willis, Associate Professor of African History at The Africa Institute presents his research titled, “Using Geographic Information Systems to Map and Analyze the Itineraries of Enslaved People Working and Seeking Freedom in the Gulf, 1925-1938” on Monday, 20 February 2023 (3:00 pm GST) at The Africa Institute Library (Click here for map).
This presentation uses geospatial methods and tools to map and analyze evidence from British manumission records that document the journeys of more than 200 people who fled from nearby communities to seek freedom from slavery in Bahrain, Muscat, and Sharjah between 1925 and 1938.
These records document recollections of the experience of capture and enslavement; the gender, age, family life, and place of origin of the enslaved; and the number of masters (owners) enslaved people experienced and the years of their enslavement. They also facilitate the study of these and other features of cultural, demographic, and economic life in the Gulf during that time. By assigning geographic coordinates to the places named in the records, Professor Willis maps the journeys with a focus on identifying and analyzing patterns. Given that most of the records document the journeys of men, he is interested in the correlation between gender and space in terms of where slave merchants trafficked and sold enslaved people and where the enslaved applied for manumission.
John Thabiti Willis, Associate Professor of African History at The Africa Institute, holds a Ph.D. in History from Emory University, USA. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies (2008-2010). He has been working as an associate professor of African history and director of Africana Studies at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, U.S.A.
He is a scholar of the social and cultural history of Africa in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds. His Ph.D. thesis and first book focused on the history and politics of masquerade performances and the institutions that organized them among the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria from precolonial to modern times.
His 2018 book, Masquerading Politics: Kinship, Gender, and Ethnicity in a Yoruba Town, Otta, 1774-1928, demonstrates how institutions that used ritual masquerade both reflected and shaped changing political and economic relations during the rise and fall of West African empires, Atlantic slavery, the spread of Islam, and the establishment of Christian missions and British colonialism. It has earned recognition as a finalist for the 2019 Best Book Prize (formerly known as the Herskovits award) by the African Studies Association and recently won the 2020 Yoruba Studies Book Prize, which honors the best books on Yoruba people and their culture over a three-year period.
The faculty seminar will be moderated by Amy Niang, Associate Professor of Political Science, The Africa Institute.
Through these lectures and workshops, The Africa Institute reaffirms its mission as a center for the study and research of Africa and its diaspora, and its commitment to the training of a new generation of critical thinkers in African and African Diaspora studies.
The seminar will be in English.
The session is free and open to the public. Registration is mandatory, Click here to book your place.
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