FOZIA BORA
ANTI-COLONIAL RESISTANCE IN A ‘HUMAN ZOO’: SUBVERTING THE ARCHIVE OF BRADFORD’S 1904 SOMALI VILLAGE
Monday Majlis Online on the 25th of November, 17:00-18:30 (UK time)
Centre for the Study of Islam, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter
Bio: Fozia Bora is Associate Professor of Islamic History at the University of Leeds, where she has recently served as Director of the Institute for Medieval Studies. She is currently on research leave, working on the topic that is the subject of today's talk. Fozia is chair of the British Association for Islamic Studies, and a trustee of the Gibb Memorial Trust. She is particularly interested in engaging communities with historical research in a variety of ways.
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The headstone of Halimo Abdo Bedel in Bradford - a young woman who visited Bradford in 1904 and is buried there (the city's first Muslim burial)
Abstract: In this talk, Dr Fozia Bora will discuss her collaboration with the Anglo-Somali Society, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Everyday Muslim, Bradford City of Culture 2025, the University of Bradford and the Bradford Literature Festival, to uncover the buried history of ‘A Somali Village in Colonial Bradford’. In May-October 1904, the Great Exhibition in Lister Park, inaugurating Cartwright Hall and promoting Bradford's businesses, displayed its star attraction: the Somali Village. 57 Somali individuals lived in a walled compound – men, women and children – attracting 348,550 visitors, the most profitable of the entertainments. This project enables the first steps towards Bradford marking the Somali Village to speak to a range of new audiences: the UK Somali community with its critical research questions; the multilingual Bradford community; the public at large who will visit Bradford City of Culture 2025. The stories of the ‘Villagers’ – often polyglot cosmopolitans – will be looked afresh by centring British Somalis in the public reinterpretation of this history, and enabling the local and contemporary art/culture scene to address issues including the white ethnographic gaze and “looking back” as an act of resistance.
In the spirit of the label ‘Majlis’ and also to make the talks even more interesting, our speakers present the topic discussed as embedded in their own journey. You can watch the previous Majlises here [ Ссылка ]-, but we don’t record the Q&A in order to keep the discussion free. Please come and enjoy the talks and the discussions : ) If you’d like to be included in the CSI (Centre for the Study of Islam, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter) mailing list, please please write to the CSI director, Istvan T Kristo-Nagy (I.T.Kristo-Nagy@exeter.ac.uk).

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