ICM founding director Salah Hassan opened the third edition of multi-disciplinary, country focused events season with "Reimagining Mobilities/Immobilities in the Indian Ocean." This conference is the the first of four multi-disciplinary conferences as part of the larger theme, "Thinking the Archipelago: Africa’s Indian Ocean Islands" for 2022-2023.
Starting in fall 2022, this season will highlight the multitudinous forces shaping Africa’s Indian Ocean rim, including overlapping forms of circulation, mobility, cultural production, ecological change, and cosmopolitanism through the lens of Africa’s islands. Indian Ocean relations have transformed over time, in each instance revealing complex, changing processes of engagement and translation. Diverse travel and migratory waves have enriched poetry, art, literature, religion, and economic exchange along the Indian Ocean’s shores. Just as important, shifting concepts of gender, race, ethnicity, environmental change, and empire have all shaped Indian Ocean African societies. These themes deserve consideration not only in comparison with other world regions, but also because forms of interaction, exchange, and alienation have engendered littoral societies with dynamic local identities simultaneously linked to proximate and distant communities.
The sessions are recorded and will be made available on YouTube.
