Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften

Peter A. Mark

Professor emeritus of Art History, Wesleyan University

Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

April 2024, Mai/June 2025

Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

»Religion as a promoter of peace: the case of Casamance (Sénégal)«?

Research partner:

Peter Mark is a fellow at the Forschungskolleg at the invitation of Roland Hardenberg, Director of the Frobenius Institute for Research in Cultural Anthropological at Goethe University. In 2024, he worked on »The earliest West African responses to the Atlantic slave trade«; the stay was funded by the Frobenius Institute. In 2025, he is collaborating with researchers from Goethe University's interdisciplinary field of potential »Religion and De:Toxification (RelTox)«.

Scholarly profile of Peter A. Mark

Peter Mark is Professor emeritus of Art History at Wesleyan University. He has worked regularly at the Frobenius Institute since 1984, both as Alexander-von-Humboldt-Fellow, and as Visiting Faculty Member. From 2015 to 2019 he was Invited Cathedratic Professor of History, at the Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon. He has also been a visiting scholar at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (Paris, 2019) and at the Max-Planck-Institut (Halle, 2018). In 2012-2013 he was Senior Fellow at the research center »Re:work, Arbeit und Lebenslauf in globalhistorischer Perspektive« at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Website:
Please find more information about Peter Mark here.

Main areas of research:

Cultural history of West Africa: pre-colonial history, art history, and 16th through 19th century European-African interaction, forms of captivity and unfree labor before the expansion of the Atlantic slave trade

Selected publications:

(ed. with José da Silva Horta and Carlos Almeida), African Ivories in the Atlantic World, 1400-1900 (Marfins Africans No Mundo Atlântico, 1400-1900), Centro de História da Universidade de Lisboa 2021.
(with José da Silva Horta), The Forgotten Diaspora: Jewish Communities in West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World, Cambridge University Press 2011.
The Wild Bull and the Sacred Forest: Form, Meaning, and Change in Senegambian Initiation Masks, Cambridge University Press 1992.

Peter A. Mark

Scholarly profile of Peter A. Mark

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