Dior Konate, predoctoral fellow at the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies, will discuss colonial prisons in Senegal from 12:30 to 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 9, on the University of Rochester’s River Campus. The Work in Progress Seminar, sponsored by the institute, will be held in room 314 of Morey Hall, and is free and open to the public.
Konate will detail her research on issues surrounding the colonial and post-colonial prison system in Senegal, colonial juvenile delinquency, colonial repression, and the death penalty in colonial Africa. She also is a doctoral candidate in African history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Her talk, titled “The Location of Colonial Prisons in Senegal: Controlling Men, Colonial Space, and Enforcing Labor,” will focus on the location of prisons in Senegal and the arguments developed by French colonizers to justify their choice in locating and re-locating prisons. Konate will examine political, economic, racial, and medical explanations crafted by the French for instituting a prison system, securing spatial territory, and obtaining cheap labor.
For more information, contact the Frederick Douglass Institute at (585) 275-7235.