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
New Article @ Material Religion
Tattoos and Sonic Imitation: Mantras, Body Tuning and Tattooing as Sounding
Material Religion 21(2), published online in December 2024. DOI 10.1080/17432200.2024.2418221
Visiting Professorship @ Uni Bonn
Winter Term 2024/25
During the winter term, you can find me at the Department of Anthropology of the Americas as Visiting Professor (Vertretungsprofessorin) of Anthropology
of the Americas, University of Bonn
October 1, 2024 - March 31, 2025
Book Series Editor @ Brill
"The Early Americas: History and Culture"
Series Editors: Mariana Françozo, Sinah Kloß, Nicholas Laluk, Genner Llanes-Ortiz
and Karoline Noack
Talk @ ifeas, Uni Mainz
"Marks of Devotion: Tattoos as Means of Subordination and Emancipation among Caribbean Hindu Women"
Institutskolloquium ifeas (Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien)
University of Mainz
January 14, 2025, 6-8pm
Book Chapter
Kloß, Sinah T. (2025): "Beyond Subordination versus Emancipation: Caribbean Godna (Tattoos) as Means of Recreating Social Relations and Affective Bonds", In: Control, Coercion, and Constraint: The Role of Religion in Overcoming and Creating Structures of Dependency, edited by Wolfram Kinzig and Barbara Loose, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 205-224. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111380575-011
Talk @ Lecture Series
"Othered Ethnography: The Influence of Intersectional Identities, Gendered Challenges and ‘Tropes of Hardship’ on Ethnographic Research",
Lecture Series Engaged Anthropology: Reimagining Social Transformation in Collaborative Anthropological Research
December 3, 2024; 12-2pm
Global Heritage Lab, University of Bonn
Talk @ Conference "Embodied Histories" -
"Sensitive and Permeable Bodies: Hair, Ritual Shaving and Birth in Hindu Suriname"
"Embodied Histories: Cultural History of, in, and through the Human Body"
16th Annual Conference of the International Society for Cultural History
University of Potsdam
September 5, 2024
Talk @ Workshop "Gendered Bodies"
"Durchlässige Körper: Ethnologische Annäherungen an körperliche Grenzen und Materialisierungsprozesse während Schwangerschaft und Geburt"
Vernetzungstreffen Medical Humanities
University of Siegen
July 5, 2024; 11:00-12:00
Book Chapter
“Tattooed Dependencies: Sensory Memory, Structural Violence and Narratives of Suffering among Caribbean Hindu Women,” In: Narratives of Dependency (eds. E. Brüggen and M. Gymnich), Berlin: De Gruyter, 347-365. DOI: 10.1515/9783111381824-016 (open access)
Journal Article
"Serving toward Release: Tattoos, Religious Work, and Coercion in Post-Indenture Communities."
Journal of Global Slavery 9 (2024): 17-42. DOI: 10.1163/2405836X-00901007
Latest BookS
Edited Volume "Transforming Spirit Bodies: Materialization and Embodied Dependencies in South America" (with L. Muders and T. Tagliati), forthcoming April 2025
Edited Volume
New York: Routledge (Routledge Studies in Cultural History).
Edited Volume.
Paderborn: Brill | Fink.
Book Series
The Early Americas: History and Culture
Series Editors: Mariana Françozo, Sinah Kloß, Nicholas Laluk, Genner Llanes-Ortiz
and Karoline Noack
"The indigenous cultures of North, Middle and South America, including the Caribbean, have a diverse and fascinating history, reaching from the early pre-colonial past until the present. Modern multidisciplinary research investigates many social, political, economic and religious aspects, such as the population movements, the original development of agriculture, sedentary communities, chiefdoms and early states, the effects of mobility and exchange, the forms, functions and meanings of writing systems and visual art, the indigenous knowledge, technology and organisation as well as cosmovision, rituals, biology and medicine, but also the process of European colonization, which caused major destruction as well as complex intercultural dynamics and synergies. Given the importance of cultural continuity in the present, this series pays further attention to living traditions and oral literature, as well as to the present-day issues of cultural values and indigenous rights."
Podcast
Podcast Episode @ Exzellent erklärt - Spitzenforschung für alle
"Tätowierungen: Tattoos als Instrumente der Macht"
Feb. 1, 2024
PAST Events
Workshop Series and Study Group
"Anthropological Perspectives on Embodied Dependencies"
