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Amer-Indian & Afro-American Studies
Description
The research focus encompasses the study of the history and social organization, languages, art, material culture and other aspects of local knowledge systems like mythology, cosmology, and ritual of the Amerindian and Afro-American populations of the Americas in the context of current processes of decolonization and self-determination. Special emphasis is placed on the indigenous populations of Amazonia, of the intermediate area between the Andes, Mesoamerica, and Amazonia, and the Afro-American populations of the Caribbean, Brazil, and Colombia. Research focuses on the relationship between Indigenous, Afro-American, and non-Indigenous groups, and between dominant national or global knowledge, concepts, and practices, on the one hand, and local cosmologies and knowledge systems, on the other. These are analyzed in the context of state politics and global dynamics that establish a framework for ethno-cultural processes and current Indigenous modernities. Such research intersects in various ways with issues of the environment, conflict, and material culture. The study of Amerindian and Afro-American societies extends beyond the regional focus on Latin American and the Caribbean to the U.S. and Canada.
The anthropological study of the Amerindian and Afro-American cultures of the Americas has a long tradition in Marburg. Karl von den Steinen, who undertook several expeditions to Brazil between 1884 and 1888, became an adjunct professor (Privatdozent) of Anthropology in 1890. Leonhard Schulze-Jena, who worked in Marburg from 1913 to 1937, published groundbreaking studies on the linguistics and anthropology of Central America. The Ethnographic Collection holds the extensive estate of Theodor Koch-Grünberg (1872-1924), an important early student of Amazonian Indians, who was born in the town of Grünberg in the vicinity of Marburg. After World War II, as Anthropology became institutionalized at Marburg University, the research focus on Latin America was expanded further. It is reflected today by several ongoing research projects.
Staff
Research Projects
- More than Writing: Coding and Decoding (in) Amerindian Graphisms between Mexico and the Andes
- Contextualizing Yukpa Language and Myths: The linguistic and ethnological position of an outsider in the Cariban language family and the northern Andean lowlands.
- Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies of North-Western South America. Toward an integrated analysis across Chibcha, Carib and Arawakan language families.
- Crossing borders: The Afro-Cuban Santeria in Germany between transnational dynamics