“Finding the photographer’s assistant: trafficked women, global micro-history, and the politics of historical rescue”

Lydia Harvey was working as a photographer’s assistant in Wellington New Zealand when she met Antonio Carvelli in 1910. He convinced her to come with him to Argentina to ‘see gentleman’, and, misled by promises of money and luxury, she agreed. After a harrowing experience in Buenos Aires and London, she became the key witness in the case against her traffickers and was repatriated to her home country. Harvey’s story is part of a larger microhistory of trafficking that I am currently writing. Using digitized newspapers, family history records online, and intensive archival research in four countries, I have discovered many details about her life, and the lives and experiences of the other people involved in this case. In this talk, I will explore the way in which this small case helps to illuminate a wider global history of trafficking in this period, and will also discuss the complicated politics of rescuing Harvey–and her traffickers–from the past.

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Montag, 16. Januar 2017
18 Uhr
Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut
Koserstrasse 20
Raum A 121

Julia’s Website (Birkbeck College)

Links to blogposts by Julia Laite

The Marginal and the Monstrous: The ‘Voices’ of Prostitutes and Traffickers in Modern History

(Sexual) Labour Day