Remeasuring Self and Society after Empire:The Human Sciences in Decolonization

22-23-24 May 2024 at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies – Geneva

Questions? Contact: pokuaa.oduro-bonsrah@graduateinstitute.ch


Commentators / Moderators: Rémy Amouroux (Université de Lausanne), Ana Antić (University
of Copenhagen)


Wed, 22 May 2024
09.15-9.30h
Welcome and Introduction
Panel I : Conjecturing Spaces (Room C1, Petal 5)
09.30–11.00h
Nancy Rose Hunt (University of Florida): Psy Talk and the Social Sciences in Two
Congolese Spaces, 1940s-1970s.
Carolyn Biltoft (Geneva Graduate Institute): Systemic Deconstructions and
Reconstructions: Psychiatry, Postmodernism, and Global Holism after Decolonization.
11.00–11.15h Coffee Break
11.15–12.45h
Allison Sanders (Institut des Mondes Africains, Paris): Grey Areas: Researchers between
France and Africa at Decolonization.
Nana Osei Quarshie (Yale University: Political Lunacy and the Making of Independent
Ghana.
12.45-14.15h Lunch
Panel II : Redefining Social Categories (Room C1, Petal 5)
14.15–15.45h
Zine Magubane (Boston College): W.E.B DuBois and Pan-Africanism: The Impact of
Decolonization on His Sociological Imagination.
Erik Linstrum (University of Virginia): Follow the Leader, Not the Elite: Authority and
the Human Sciences in the Age of Decolonization.
15.45–16.15h Coffee Break
16.15-17.45h
Ishita Pande (Queen’s University, Kingston): De/Colonizing Sexology: Childhood, the
Sciences of Homosexuality, and the Imagination of Hindu India.
Anne Schult (Washington University in St Louis): European Refugees at the End of
Empire.
18.15-19.30h KEYNOTE LECTURE: Helen Tilley (Northwestern University):
Thinking with Blind Men and Elephants: A Dialogue on Personhood, Empires, and
Unknowable Things. (Lecture hall A2, Petal 1, Masion de la Paix)

Thurs, 23 May 2024
Panel III : Sciences as Shifting Fields (Room C1, Petal 5)
9.30–11.00h
Damiano Matasci (Université de Genève): A Shared Knowledge? Human Sciences and
Inter-imperial Cooperation in Late Colonial Africa.
Ian Merkel (University of Groningen): The Human Sciences at the Semi periphery:
National Autonomy, North Atlantic Collaborations, and Budding Global South Visions in
Postwar Latin America.
11.00-11.15h Coffee Break
11.15-12.45h
Joshua Klein (Geneva Graduate Institute): From the Field to the Self: French
Anthropology, Social Psychiatry and the Ambiguous Study of Acculturation in the Age of
Decolonization, 1950–1980.
Sebastián Gil-Riaño (University of Pennsylvania): From “Cultural Change” to
“Deculturation”: Making and Molding Cold War Violence in Paraguay during the 1970s.
12.45–14.15 Lunch
Panel IV : Registering Subjectivity (Room C1, Petal 5)
14.15-15.45h
Pokuaa Oduro-Bonsrah (Geneva Graduate Institute): Peering into Intimate Spaces: Psy
Scientists and their Observations of Child Rearing Practices in Uganda (1940-1970s).
Leighan Renaud (University of Bristol): Re-Mapping Family Trees in Contemporary
Caribbean Literature.
15.45-16.15 Coffee Break
16.15–17.45h
Richard Phillips (University of Sheffield): Adventure After Empire: Decolonizing Popular
Geographies.
Rosa Eidelpes (Universität Wien): Ethnoboom, the Project of an “Alternative Ethnology”
and Self-Alienation, or: Decolonizing the European Subject?
19.30h (tbc) Dinner


Fri, 24 May 2024
Panel V : Universality, Particularity (Room C1, Petal 5)
09.30-11.00h
Omnia El Shakry (Yale University): Freud in Translation: Three Essays, a Survey, and a
Group.
Sloan Mahone (University of Oxford): From Abeokuta to the World: African Psychiatry
and the Struggle for Universality in the Period of Decolonization.
11.00-11.15h Coffee Break
11.15-12.00h
Mischa Suter (Geneva Graduate Institute): The Place of Psychosis and the Effects of
Racism in the Practice of Psychoanalysis (Paris, Dakar, 1960s).
12.00–12.30h
Concluding Discussion
12.30h: End of Conference – Snacks/Lunch.

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