CorpseFlows, Part 1: Burials and Bodies in Colonial and Post-Colonial Muslim Africa and Syria

Session Abstract

The transnational flows of goods, ideas, and living bodies have attracted much attention from historians.   These movements have often been accompanied by the movements of dead bodies for the purposes of burial, mourning, celebration, or display.  The first of two sessions on these “Corpse Flows,”  this panel will examine the ways in which repatriations, exhumations, reburials, and taxidermies  have been used to assert and construct identities, heritages, boundaries, and hierarchies within the contexts of colonialism and decolonization.  This panel will explore the meanings of posthumous migrations of colonialism’s generals, victims, missionaries, and settlers, and of the fallen heroes of anti-imperialist movements, as well as more liminal bodies.   The panel will situate these migrations and the ensuing controversies within our own debates about transnationalism, colonialism, and anti-colonialism.