Transforming Cultures Public Lecture
Professor Michael Taussig
Professor, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
Colour & Slavery
On the 17th June 2008, TfC hosted a Public Lecture by Professor Michael Taussig, entitled "Colour and Slavery".
An audio recording of the lecture is now available to listen to through the TfC eAudioRepository. Follow links to listen to a recording of "Colour and Slavery" [MP3]
Fictocriticism Symposium & Postgraduate Workshop
In addition to his Public Lecture, Prof. Taussig took part in a Fictocritical Symposium together with invited guests chaired by Professor Stephen Muecke (Director, Transforming Cultures) and a TfC postgraduate workshop.
Brief Biography:
Columbia University Professor, Michael Taussig is one of the most innovative, distinguished, and socially engaged voices in cultural anthropology. An interdisciplinary thinker and engaging writer, Taussig's work combines aspects of ethnography, story-telling, and social theory. His publications include two Spanish-language books on the history of slavery and its aftermath, and eight English-language books on issues of slavery, hunger, commercialization of agriculture, Marxist economic theory, popular culture, folk healing, colonialisms, theories of ritual, cultural productions of terror, the state and public secrecy, museums and memory, and poor communities in Colombia. In the title essay of his most recent book, the collection Walter Benjamin's Grave (University of Chicago Press, 2006), Taussig reflects upon his own visit to Benjamin's gravesite in Port Bou on the French-Spanish border, relays accounts of Benjamin's travels as he fled the Nazis, and describes the circumstances of Benjamin's 1940 suicide. Taussig has lectured at universities, conferences, and cultural institutions around the world and has received numerous honors, including a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.
His significant publications include:
My Cocaine Museum (2004);
Law in a Lawless Land (2003);
Defacement, Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative (1999);
The Magic of the State (1997);
Mimesis and Alterity. A Particular History of the Senses (1992);
The Nervous System (1991).
Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man. A Study in Terror and Healing (1991); 
For further enquiries, please contact Transforming Cultures.
