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

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