Postcolonial Identities and Decolonial Struggles: Creolization and Colored Cosmopolitanism (International Field)

Open to doctoral students based at universities within the U.S. and first-year doctoral students based at universities within the United Kingdom.

Workshop dates:

Spring - May 28-June 2, 2013 in Coventry, England

Fall - September 18-22, 2013 in Cambridge, Massachusetts

This workshop addresses the production of contestatory cultures from the age of enslavement and colonization to that of decolonization. It is concerned with the continuing resonance across social, cultural and political fields of the emancipatory struggles of those times. We will focus, in particular, on the historical and contemporary dimensions of creolization and colored cosmopolitanism. Creolization refers to the mutually constituting processes of identity construction, such as cultural syncretism, hybridity, or mestisaje that oppressed peoples create in their struggles against injustice, most usually in contexts of colonialism, settlement, and enslavement. It is a frame through which researchers can recognize these difficult histories, not to diminish the inhumane conditions of the time, but rather to acknowledge the creative capacity of human endeavour to cope with and overcome such conditions. The idea of ‘colored cosmopolitanism’ is one such product that points to movements of socio-cultural engagement and solidarity across racial and national lines.

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Field Directors

Gurminder Bhambra

Professor, University of Warwick, Sociology [ bio ]

Gurminder K. Bhambra is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. Her research addresses how the experiences and claims of non-European 'others' have been rendered invisible to the dominant narratives and analytical frameworks of sociology. While her research interests are primarily in the area of historical sociology, she is also interested in the intersection of the social sciences with recent work in postcolonial studies. Her current research project is on the possibilities for historical sociology in a postcolonial world. She is Director of the Social Theory Centre, University of Warwick, and convenor of the British Sociological Association's Theory Study Group. She is also co-editor, with Professor Robin Cohen (Oxford), of the new monograph series, Theory for a Global Age for Bloomsbury Academic. Bhambra received her D. Phil in Sociology from the University of Sussex.

Nico Slate

Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, History [ bio ]

Nico Slate is Assistant Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University. His research and teaching focuses on the transnational history of social movements in the United States, with a particular emphasis on South Asia and on the history of struggles against racism and imperialism worldwide. He maintains broad interests in the intersection of literature, philosophy, politics, and history, with particular interests in the history of race and caste, diaspora, cosmopolitanism, anti-colonial and post-colonial nationalisms, environmental science and politics, the Second World War, the Cold War, and nonviolent civil disobedience. Slate received his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University.

Research Fields