[SydPhil] Critical Antiquities Reading Group - Slavery's Future Past

[Tristan Bradshaw]

Dear all,

The Critical Antiquities Network is pleased to announce a new series of hybrid interdisciplinary reading groups in 2026. This year’s topic is “Slavery’s Future Past.”

Bringing ancient and modern histories of enslavement into direct discourse, the series asks how contemporary critical theory might reshape the study of slavery, and how ancient histories of enslavement could continue to illuminate the political conditions of the present. Throughout the series, classical scholarship is placed in dialogue with political theory, anthropology, Marxist thought, ethnic studies, legal theory, and abolitionism, amongst other fields, helping to consider the enduring complexity of slavery and its violences. Readings will include excerpts from Orlando Patterson’s classic, Slavery and Social Death, more recent important works by Saidiya Hartman and Achille Mbembe, and new scholarship on slavery in ancient Babylon, Greece, Rome, and the modern Americas.


Participants are invited to consider how systems of enslavement have been theorised and historicised, reimagined across different times and places. We will pay special attention to the methodological challenges of writing histories of such perverse violence. Our aim is to trace the multiple historical genealogies of slavery and the ways these continue to shape the present.


The questions we ask include: What is slavery? How is slavery constitutive of capitalism? How can the history of slavery be written? How do systems of enslavement reproduce themselves? What political futures become imaginable after slavery?

The reading groups are open to anyone and everyone, in whatever location, vocation, and life stage. Expertise in ancient worlds is not required. These meetings will be open forums for discussion and ask participants to read approximately 60 pages of material by way of preparation. We hope that these reading groups will give participants greater literacy and confidence in areas of Critical Antiquities with which they may be less familiar.

Format will be both online and in person. The first in-person workshop will take place at the Australian National University (Friday, August 28, 11am-1pm), followed by meetings at the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne. All meeting details can be found here: https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/RpolCE8wmrtgrQD5KHNfGNh7eaZ7?domain=criticalantiquities.org

To register and receive Zoom links and access to PDFs of the readings, please complete this form<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/iKUKCGv0oyC0xVM5oC7hmXhBlMbx?domain=forms.cloud.microsoft>.

These reading groups will culminate in the second Can Assembly on November 30 at the University of Sydney. Information about the assembly can be found here: https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/PfATCJyBrGf1G7YEPUzi34hyiaZq?domain=criticalantiquities.org

All best,

Tristan Bradshaw, Ben Brown, Tom Geue, Andy Poe (CAN co-directors)