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The Slavery Studies Working Group presents a panel discussion moderated by Gabeba Baderoon (PSU), Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and African Studies.
Gabeba Baderoon received a PhD in English from the University of Cape Town, and has held fellowships at the African Gender Institute, the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, the Nordic Africa Institute and the University of Sheffield. She has published widely on representations of Islam, slavery and the construction of 'race' and sex in South Africa. In 2007-2008, she was a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Africana Research Center at Penn State. She joined the Departments of Women's Studies and African and African American Studies as an Assistant Professor in July 2008. Her most recent book, Regarding Muslims: From Slavery to Post-Apartheid, examines how Muslims fit into South Africa's well-known narrative of colonialism, apartheid and postapartheid.
Gregory Downs studies the political and cultural history of the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Particularly, he investigates the transformative impact of the Civil War. His first monograph, Declarations of Dependence: The Long Reconstruction of Popular Politics in the South, 1861-1908, was published by University of North Carolina Press in 2011, and examined the wartime creation of fantastic views of government among black and white Americans whose hopes for a state that could deliver them from want helped fashion an eccentric, but powerful post-bellum popular politics rooted in claims of friendship between politicians and the masses. The book was a Choice Outstanding Academic Title.
Chouki El Hamel received his doctorate from the University of Sorbonne (Paris, France). His training in France at the Centre de Recherches Africaines was in pre-colonial African History and Islamic studies. His research interests focus on the spread and the growth of Islamic culture and the evolution of Islamic institutions in Africa. He is particularly interested in investigating the subaltern relationship of servile and marginalized communities to ruling institutions, power, race, class and gender politics within Islamic culture. He published two major books and many scholarly articles in academic journals and popular magazines. His most recent book is Black Morocco: a History of Slavery, Race, and Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is known for her work on women's labor and migration in economic globalization. Her research has been featured in various news media outlets including NPR's The World, Bloomberg News, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, de Volkskrant, and American Prospect. Her dissertation was made into a documentary, The Chain of Love (2000), by the public broadcasting station VPRO-TV in the Netherlands. Professor Parreñas has co-edited three anthologies and has written five monographs as well as numerous peer-reviewed articles. Examining the intersections of human trafficking and labor migration, her current research analyzes the constitution of unfree labor among migrant domestic workers in Dubai and Singapore.