Rethinking Human Zoos : conference program

Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies

In association with ACHAC, Liverpool University Press
and the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni

Rethinking Human Zoos
Friday 28/Saturday 29 November 2008

Institut Français du Royaume-Uni
17 Queensberry Place
LONDON SW7 2DT

A conference organized to coincide with the publication by Liverpool University Press of Human Zoos: Between Science and Spectacle in the Age of Colonial Empires, an English-language edition of Zoos humains

PROGRAMME

Friday (28 November)

1.00pm
SFPS AGM

Introduction and film projection

3.00pm
Introductory remarks, Charles Forsdick (University of Liverpool) - Human Zoos. Science and Spectacle in the Age of Colonial Empires

3.15 pm
Lecture, Sandrine Lemaire et Gilles Boetsch (ACHAC) - 'The Human Zoos project: l'émergence d'un débat'

Gilles Boestch will speak in French, Sandrine Lemaire in English

4.00pm
Éric Deroo (ACHAC), Presentation of the film Zoos Humains

4.30pm
Projection, Zoos Humains (52 mn, d'Éric Deroo et Pascal Blanchard)

5.30pm
Lecture, Nicolas Bancel et Pascal Blanchard (ACHAC) - Impact, spécificité et temporalité des Zoos humains

6.00pm
Débat, réactions et questions autour de l'objet de recherche "Human Zoos" (with the six editors of the collection published by Liverpool University Press)

6.30pm Book launch

Saturday (29 november)

9.30am Session 1 (Historicizing the Human Zoo):
Garry Sandison (University College Cork), Le Mètre du maître: empire, anthropométrie et l'incommensurable
Hilke Thode-Arora, Abraham's Diary (1880/81) - a Hagenbeck Ethnic Show from an Inuk Participant's Viewpoint
Sadiah Qureshi (University of Cambridge), Converting "Unfruitful Wonder": R. G. Latham, Displayed Peoples and the Natural History of Race, 1843-1863'

11.00 am Coffee and poster session
Presentation of poster: Louise Hardwick (University of Oxford), 'Human Zoos: Exotic and Erotic?'

11.45am Plenary lecture
Herman Lebovics (SUNY Stony Brook), Etrangères, Indigènes et les Crocodiles: Odd Neighbors at the Palais de la Porte Dorée

1.00pm Lunch (own arrangements)

2.00pm Session 2 (Viewing the Human Zoo):
Van Troi Tran, An Empire for the Hungry Masses: the Crowd Eats and Meets the Indigènes at the 1889 World's Fair
Jonathan Hensher (University of Manchester), "Pour les enfants et pour toute la famille": Race and Spectatorship in Pre-War French Popular Visual Culture

3.00pm Coffee

3.30pm Session 3 (Legacies of the Human Zoo):
Annette Bickford, "Nice for Daddy": Racialized Theatres of Sexual Alterity
Scott Taylor, The Post-Colonial Anti-Zoo in the United States

4.30pm Concluding remarks
Charles Forsdick (University of Liverpool), Situating Human Zoos

5.00pm End of conference