Sounds in the silence of political exile
My recent discovery of Alexander Sochaczewski’s painting, Farewell to Europe!, in the Museum Pawilon-X in Warsaw compelled me to think anew about the experience of political exile and about the innate “wordlessness” that the state intended it to symbolize. Although Sochaczewski never sold a single painting during his life, today his work is viewed by thousands of visitors who […]
Dating the Social Death of the Eighteenth Century Criminal. By Rachel Bennett
In April 2015 I presented a paper at a conference held at the University of Leicester entitled ‘When is Death?’ The conference was organised by members of the Wellcome Trust funded project, Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse. My PhD has been conducted as part of this project. The conference sought to investigate the […]
“Convicts, Indigenous People and Labour”
A few weeks ago the Carceral Archipelago team of postgraduates presented at the University of Leicester’s annual postgraduate conference. The theme of the Carceral Archipelago panel was “Convicts, Indigenous People and Labour”. The project’s three postgraduate students – Kellie Moss, Katy Roscoe and Carrie Crockett – presented three papers that ranged from Western Australia to […]
On multi-sited research and mono-sited (nationalist) memory
Addressing convict transportation –the key feature in the Carceral Archipelago project – implies multi-sited research, that is, research in archives located in different places (and countries/continents). Indeed, as convicts were transported from site to site within and beyond the borders of empires and nation-states, they left traces in official records presently held in repositories across […]
Where Empires Meet
In a previous blog, I wrote on the theme of the politics of comparison, of the connected history of circulation and mobility that underpins the CArchipelago project team’s approach to the historiography, theory and archive of penal colonies. Research associate Christian De Vito has since expanded the discussion, discussing the basis of various approaches […]
Admin, Conference, and Website, Oh My!
In the year since I joined The Carceral Archipelago, it has been a pleasure to support the novel and extensive research being conducted by the project’s members. Our team is conducting research on and about five continents over as many centuries and making exciting connections and discoveries in archives, at heritage sites, and in fruitful […]
(In)visible Aboriginal Convict Heritage on Rottnest Island
In modern day Australia there are two key heritage ‘issues’ that are addressed in completely different ways – firstly, convict heritage; secondly, histories of aboriginal contact and conflict with European settlers. I will explore the tensions between the two narratives that emerge in the heritage of Rottnest Island, which held convicted Aboriginals between 1839 and […]
Comparisons and Connections (part 2)
In her last blog (https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/carchipelago/2015/02/05/the-politics-of-comparison-writing-a-global-history-of-punishment/), Clare Anderson points to the challenges the Carceral Archipelago Project faces in writing the history of punishment as global history. Indeed, addressing the singularity of each site and connection of convict transportation and proposing broader interpretations is a complex task, which requires a high degree of self-reflexivity regarding our methodological […]
Comparisons and Connections (part 1)
In her last blog (https://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/carchipelago/2015/02/05/the-politics-of-comparison-writing-a-global-history-of-punishment/), Clare Anderson points to the challenges the Carceral Archipelago Project faces in writing the history of punishment as global history. Indeed, addressing the singularity of each site and connection of convict transportation and proposing broader interpretations is a complex task, which requires a high degree of self-reflexivity regarding our methodological […]
The politics of comparison: writing a global history of punishment
The Carceral Archipelago project faces enormous challenges in writing the history of punishment as global history. Our research ranges across almost five centuries, from Portugal’s first use of convicts in North Africa in 1415 to the closure of Stalin’s gulags in the 1960s. As readers of this blog will know, we are working on the […]
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