BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY: 'The Long Southern African Past: Enfolded Time and the Challenges
  of Archive' - Prof Carolyn Hamilton\, University of Cape Town
DTSTART:20161031T170000Z
DTEND:20161031T180000Z
UID:TALK68582@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Victoria Jones
DESCRIPTION:The long southern African past before the advent of European c
 olonialism remains resolutely neglected despite powerful post-apartheid im
 pulses of various kinds for its recovery and celebration. In the last twen
 ty years or so\, outside of the specialist discipline of archaeology\, the
 re has been relatively little research undertaken to support those impulse
 s.  In this paper I offer my understanding of some of the things that have
  given distinctive shape to this field\, and more particularly to enquiry 
 into the late independent periods\, attempt to account for its stalled asp
 ect\, identify the challenges as I see them\, and indicate some of the dir
 ections of new research currently being inaugurated. Amongst other things\
 , I offer critiques of the prevalent forms of periodization\, the entrench
 ed and limiting effects of persistent thinking in terms of forms of ethnos
 \, as well as of the portmanteau notion of oral traditions which operates 
 in this field and its consignment out of the realm of political discourse.
  I make an argument for urgently needed intellectual histories of how this
  area of history became the preserve of certain disciplines and not others
 \, and of how concepts migrated across these disciplines to become entrenc
 hed as the foundational elements in the history of the region.  I go on to
  deal with the making and reshaping of the available archive for these per
 iods and the methodological implications of how that making and reshaping 
 is understood.\n
LOCATION:Seminar Room S1 Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge
  CB3 9DT
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR