9.02 Verena Krebs; Felix Girke
Untold Ethiopian histories: Finding and filling vexing gaps in the academic record
This panel focuses on something nonexistent: ‘untold’ episodes in Ethiopian historiography and Ethiopian Studies. While certain great narratives about Ethiopia are by now shared by everybody in the field, much tacit disciplinary knowledge that has never been written down in any accessible or even citable form is also shared among practitioners. Moreover, in this age of interdisciplinarity, many research projects are based on the coordinated cooperation of scholars from different disciplines, enabling new approaches towards Ethiopian Studies. This is an important step in area studies, and obviates many problems of earlier approaches. It also casts our own limits as researchers into stark relief, whether we be archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, philologists, sociologists or art historians. A complex conceptual area such as “Ethiopia” presents us with much that is out-of-place, much that has traveled and is not easily understood from a merely ‘mono-disciplinary’ perspective.
This panel invites researchers from any discipline working on Ethiopia to point out gaps in the academic record they wish would be (or would already long have been) filled by members of other disciplines, with their different methods and instrumentarium. It is also intended as a laboratory of ideas in which vexing gaps in the record, the lacuna of knowledge in the field that somebody else (maybe!) could fill, should be dragged out into the open. By probing the boundaries between disciplines and the limits they impose on their practitioners, new hypotheses and new cooperations might emerge.
Presenters are thus invited to report how their specific work ran up against a lack of knowledge or understanding they themselves felt unable to overcome. Ideally, this panel will provide inspiration for future research, giving hints, suggesting topics, and tracing potential connections benefiting the field as a whole.
ACCEPTED PAPER
| Prof. | BAHRU ZEWDE | Writing the Biography of Fitawrari Habta-Giyorgis: Some Methodological Issues |
| Dr. | GIRKE Felix | Closed minds and open systems: discussing limits of anthropology |
| Mr | KAMIL ABDUL OUMER | Muslim scholars in the struggle against the Italian occupation in Ethiopia, the case of sheikh Seid Ibrahim Chale(1870?-1938 EC.), Sheikh Ahmed Yasin Al-Debatiy (1870-1933 EC) and Sheikh Zegeye (1890s?-1938? EC) |
| Mr & Dr & Dr. & Ms. & Mr | KANSITE GELLEBO & Sophia THUBAUVILLE & Sabine DINSLAGE & Kim GLÜCK & Moritz A. MÜLLER | Archival material about the Konso by A.E. Jensen – An Ethiopian Assessment |
| Mr | KEDERALA MOHAMMED AHMED | The Role of Museum in Promoting Social Harmony: a case study on the "Red Terror" Matyrs' Memorial Museum |
| Dr. | KREBS Verena | Diplomacy as a means to an end: Solomonic Ethiopian interest and involvement in Western Europe in the 15th and early 16th century |
| Mr | MOHAMMED JEMAL AHMED | Who was the king of Ethiopia? Imam Ahmed Ibn Ibrahim Al-Ghazi versus Libne Dingle (1529-1543): the hidden history of the Medieval Ethiopia |
| Mr | PAULAU Stanislau | Othering Western Christianity: Contested Notion of ‘Protestantism’ in the Ethiopian Orthodox Discourse of the Early Twentieth Century |
| Ms. | SAFIA AIDID | The In-Between Space: Reflections on Historical Study of the Somali Region |
| Prof. | SHIFERAW BEKELE | Treating a Taboo Subject: Review of the Literature on Collaboration in Western and Southern Ethiopia during the Period of Fascist Occupation, 1936-1941 |
| Prof. | TAMCKE Martin | Filling gaps in the history of Ethio-European relations in the 18th century: The Moravians and Ethiopia |
| Prof. | WENINGER Stefan | Friedrich Rückert and Ethiopian Studies |
This panel is being generously supported by the Center of Excellence: Cultural Foundations of Social Integration (University of Konstanz).
