Conference sessions

Title of the session

PERCEPTIONS OF PAST DISASTERS IN EAST AFRICA: ARCHAEOLOGY, ART HISTORY AND LITERARY STUDIES IN DIALOGUE

Session Organizer(s)

Professor Dr, Felix Chami,
University of Dar es Salaam,
Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies,
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania:
Email: [email protected]

Dr. Elizabeth Sekwiha Gwajima,
University of Dar es Salaam, School of Education,
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Email: [email protected] 

Dr. Vera-Simone Schulz,
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut,
Via Giuseppe Giusti 44, 50121 Firenze,
Italy Email: [email protected]

Delivery format

Podium

Nature of a session

Open for Contributions

Session abstract

Our times are characterized by an ever-increasing number of worldwide disasters that even threaten to become more severe in the future due to climate change and human exploitation of the Earth. This session focuses on perceptions of past disasters in East Africa and brings three fields into conversation with each other that will enrich our understanding of the past in order to learn for the future. Bringing archaeology, art history and literary studies into dialogue with one another, the session will explore case studies of past disasters in East Africa from various disciplinary perspectives including archaeological excavations, studies of landscapes and the built environment, ecologies and aesthetics, and descriptions of disasters in literary texts. The session will engage with numerous temporalities, past, present and future. It will provide new insights and be a platform for discussion with regard to issues of heritage, human and non-human relationships, resilience, sustainability, human-environment interactions, and entanglements between the local and the global, and it will show the potentials of interdisciplinary conversations for tackling the question of disasters as one of the most challenging topics of our times.