Sinah Theres Kloß
I'm a social anthropologist and research group leader at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS), University of Bonn, Germany. My main research areas are the anthropology of religion; body politics and embodiment; material culture studies; tattooing, clothing and dress; transnational migration; and Postcolonial and Southern theory. My regional focus is on the Caribbean, especially Guyana and Suriname, but I also specialize in the transcultural flows between India and the Caribbean.
News
Talk @ Conference "Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour"
Anton de Kom Universiteit, Paramaribo, Suriname
"Godnas, Gurus and Gurmukh: Beyond Tattoos as Marks of Servitude and Resistance in Hindu Suriname and Guyana"
June 7, 2023; 10:30 am
Book Chapter
"‘We knew it!’: Caribbean Hindu Responses to Restrictions of Touch during COVID-19. 2023." In: CoronAsur: Asian Religions in the Covidian Age (eds. N. Lang, E. Larson, C. Lorea and E. Hertzman), University of Hawai‘i Press, pp. 129-133.
Head of Committee @ Socare e.V. (Society for Caribbean Research)
Elected as Head of Committee in the Socare Executive Board for the period March 2023 - March 2025
Talk @ MESH Cross-pollinators
with Carolin Schwegler
University of Cologne, Germany
April 4, 2023 | 12.00-13.00
Call for Papers @ Journal of Indentureship and its Legacies
"Indentured Bodies / Embodiments of Indenture", edited by Sinah Kloß and Jennifer Leetsch
Research Article @ The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology
"Embodying Dependency: Caribbean Godna (Tattoos) as Female Subordination and Resistance", 2022, 27(4): 601–612.
Talk @ Ev. Erwachsenenbildungswerk Westfalen und Lippe e.V.
"Wenn der Glaube unter die Haut geht: Religiöse Symbolik in Tattoos"
Ev. Gemeindezentrum EGZ Uffeln, Vlotho
November 4, 2022, 7:30 pm
Talk @ ZERG Lecture Series
"Marks of Dependency: Religious Tattooing among Caribbean Hindu Women"
University of Bonn, Germany
June 28, 2022; 6:15 pm
Discussant @ Workshop
"Materialities, Relationalities, Porosities: Anthropological Perspectives on Skin Beyond the Social"
Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, FU Berlin
February 18, 2022
Publication
"Tattoo," 2021. In: The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Wiley Online Library.
Book Chapter
“Touching Deities: Offerings, Energies, and the Notion of Touch in Guyanese Hinduism”, In: Religion and Touch (eds. C. Welch and A. Whitehead), Sheffield: Equinox Publishing (Religion of the Senses), pp. 51-66.
Latest BookS
Edited Volume
New York: Routledge (Routledge Studies in Cultural History).
Edited Volume.
Paderborn: Brill | Fink.
Edited volume
Munich: oekom.
Upcoming Events
Conference @ BCDSS, University of Bonn, Germany
Competing Memories: The Politics of Remembering Enslavement, Emancipation and Indentureship in the Caribbean
Socare e.V.'s bi-annual conference, organized by Sinah Kloß (Bonn), Andrea Gremels (Frankfurt) and Ulrike Schmieder (Hannover)
March 29-31, 2023
The Caribbean is a space of dynamic and ever-changing memories. Here, as elsewhere, socio-political disparities and power imbalances commonly impact the capacity and means to promote specific
memories and historical narratives, through which the past is created, adapted and negotiated. These dynamics influence which processes and memories are included or excluded in specific histories
and which versions of the past are reconstructed, selected and interpreted.
The international conference “Competing Memories” hence focuses on the politics of memory and the constructions and representations of plural and divergent memories in Caribbean contexts,
especially but not exclusively in relation to enslavement, emancipation and indentureship. As understandings of ‘history’ and ‘memory’ may vary, contributors will look at the different and
strategic ways these concepts are used within and in relation to the Caribbean.
The conference is going to take place on March 29–31, 2023 at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn, Germany. It is funded by the BCDSS and the German Research
Foundation (DFG). It is co-hosted by the Society for Caribbean Research (Socare e.V.) and is organized by Sinah Kloß (Bonn), Andrea Gremels (Frankfurt) and Ulrike Schmieder (Hannover). Updates
will also be published on http://caribbeanresearch.net/de/socare-tagung-2023/
Past events
Conference @ BCDSS, University of Bonn, Germany
Transforming Spirit Bodies: Changing Materialities and Embodied Dependencies
September 29-30, 2022
The interdisciplinary conference focuses on the bodies and embodiments of spirits, their (im-)materialities, and the bodily transformations, which they may be subject to in different socio-cultural contexts. Contributions analyze the embodied experiences of asymmetrical dependencies among humans and spirits and how the sensory experiences of interdependence are negotiated in their interactions. They examine and compare the particular (historical) moments and conditions under which these bodily transformations occur and how they can influence understandings of human–nonhuman interdependence.