Conference Program - Africana Studies

An International Conference
Organized by
AFRICANA STUDIES DEPARTMENT
LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
RIO DE LA PLATA HISTORY WORKSHOP
CHANCELLOR’S DIVERSITY CHALLENGE FUND
April 30 and May 1, 2015
8am-7pm
UNC Charlotte Student Union
Conference Program
Thursday, April 30th, 2015 – UNCC Student Union
8:00 – 8:30am – Breakfast (Room 340)
8:30 – 8:45am – Welcome Remarks (Room 340): Bill Hill
(Senior Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) and Akin Ogundiran (Chair of the Department of Africana Studies)
8:45 – 10:00am – First Session
Panel 1: Visualizing Blackness in the Nation (Rm 261)
 Dan Cozart, University of New Mexico: “Afro-Peruvian Creoles and the Deconstruction of National Dualism”
 Prisca Gayles, University of Texas at Austin: “Maximizing Citizenship with Minimal Representation: An Analysis of AfroArgentine Civil Society Organizing Strategies”
 Brian Jackson, University of California at Santa Cruz: “AfroLatinidad and the Denial of Blacks in El Salvador: Defining Racial Identities in a Country Where Racism Makes up the National Discourse”
 Judith Lantigua, Pennsylvania State University: “A Look at
Transnational Afro-Cultural Identities in the Dominican Diaspora: A Perspective on the Impact of Spatial Relationships, Migrations and Memory”
Chair: Felix Germain, Africana Studies, UNC Charlotte
Panel 2: The Arts as Spaces of Identity: Literature, Music, and Painting (Rm
263).
 Horacio Castillo Pérez, University of Georgia: “Santa lujuria: exceso y genealogía en la identidad cubana en dispersión”.
 Alexandra Combs, University of North Carolina at Wilmington:
“La manifestación de una nueva identidad en Los Cuatro Espejos de Quince Duncan”.
 Angela Rajagopalan, UNC Charlotte: “A Devil in the Details:
Depicting Mexica Rites of Kingship in a Colonial Context”.
 Petra Rivera-Rideau, Virginia Tech: “Imagining Loíza: Tego
Calderón’s African Diasporic Interventions”.
Chair: Honoré Missihoun, Africana Studies, UNC Charlotte
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10:00 – 10:15am Coffee Break (Rooms 262 and 266)
10:15 – 11:30am – Second Session
Panel 3: Of Maroons and Other Fighters: Trans-Atlantic Perspectives (Rm
261)
 Sean Gerrity, City University of New York: “Slave Marronage
in Latin America and the United States: A Comparative Analysis”
 Brandon Hill, Independent Multimedia Artist: “Black Power,
Marcus Garvey, and the Necessity for transformational PanAfricanism throughout the African Diaspora”
 Joseph F. Jordan, UNC Chapel Hill: ““Aswarm With the Spirits
of All Ages Here”: The Great Dismal Swamp and Space, Place
and Freedom in the Slave Imaginary”
Chair: Tanure Ojaide, Africana Studies, UNC Charlotte
Panel 4: Diaspora Conversations in the U.S. (Rm 263)
 Luciana Brito, Universidade de São Paulo: ““We are AfricoAmerican People”: Building Transnational Identities in the
19th Century United States”.
 Gregory Mixon, University of North Carolina at Charlotte:
““African Descendant People in the Space of Militia Service:
The Case of Georgia in the
late Nineteenth Century”
 Nicholas Rinehart, Harvard University: “Enslaved Testimony
And Religious Institutions In Colonial Latin America
Chair: Carmen Soliz, History, UNC Charlotte
9 – 12:15pm Río de la Plata Workshop Session 1 (Room 264)
 Commentator: Alex Borucki, University of California-Irvine
 9:00-10:00am Sylvain Poosson, Thomas Nelson Community
College, ‘Sarmiento el africano: a game of dislocation of
memory and selective culture”
 10:00-11:00am Judith Anderson, College of New Rochelle,
“Rita Montero: Linking Black Identity in Argentina and the
United States”.
 Coffee Break for Rio de la Plata participants,11:00-11:15am
 11:15-12:15pm Edith Moss Jackson, Independent Scholar “ReImagining Afrodescendants’ Contributions to Argentine Literature & Culture”
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Conference Program
Thursday, April 30th, 2015 – UNCC Student Union
11:45 – 1:00pm – Lunch (Room 340 – Only for Presenters)
1:00 – 2:15pm – Third Session
Panel 5: Connecting the Spaces of Slavery (Rm 261)
 Henry Lovejoy, University of Texas at Austin: “West Africa
GIS and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database: Theoretical
Approaches and Methodological Considerations”
 Carolina González Undurraga, Universidad de Chile: “Slavery,
Justice and Rights: A Comparative Proposal for Santiago de
Chile and Mexico City, 1770-1830”
 K. Russell Lohse, Pennsylvania State University: “Looking for
the Congo in Costa Rica: Africans and Creolization in Latin
America”
Chair: Dorothy Smith-Ruiz, Africana Studies, UNC Charlotte
Panel 6: Saints and Voduns Across National Borders (Rm 263)
 Michael Iyanaga, College of William and Mary, “Tracing the African Diaspora through Saints, Rosaries, and Antiphonal Song”
 Bertin Louis, The University of Tennessee: “Haitian Protestant
Views of Vodou nd the Importance of Karacktè within a
Trnasnational Social Field”
 James Padilioni Jr., College of William and Mary: “Three Faces,
Three Diasporan Places: Locating Refractions of Africa the
Americas in Atlanta’s Cult of Saint Martin De Porres”
Chair: Christopher Cameron, History, UNC Charlotte.
2:30 – 4:30 pm – Roundtable: Space and Region in the African
Diaspora and Latin America: Connections, Comparisons, and Dialogues Across National Borders (Room 340)
 Michele Reid-Vazquez, University of Pittsburgh
 Jason McGraw, Indiana University at Bloomington
 Mariana Dantas, Ohio University
 Reid Andrews, University of Pittsburgh
 Moderator: Oscar de la Torre, UNC Charlotte
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4:30-5:00pm Coffee Break (Rooms 262 and 266)
5:00 pm: Keynote Address (Room 340):
George Reid Andrews
Distinguished Professor and Chair, University of Pittsburgh
“To Count or Not to Count:
The Census in Afro-Latin America, 1776-2015”
Friday, May 1st – UNCC Student Union
8:00 – 8:30am – Breakfast (Room 340)
8:30 – 8:45am – Welcome Remarks (Room 340): Carlos Coria
(Latin American Studies Director) and Jürgen Buchenau
(Department of History Chair)
8:45 – 10:00am – First Session
Panel 7: Social Movements, Labor, and Politics in the U.S. and Mexico (Rm
261)
 Jeffrey Bortz, Appalachian State University: “The Evolution of
the Rules of Work on Mexican Railroads, 1884-1923”
 Nicholas Ortiz, University of North Carolina at Charlotte:
“Civilismo, Personalismo, and Militarismo: José Vasconcelos
and the Presidential Election of 1929 in Mexico”
 Diamond Ray, Bryn Mawr College, and Jamie Thomas, Swarthmore College: “Locating Womanism and Activism in the U.S.
and the African Diaspora from 1969 to #BlackLivesMatter”
Chair: Margaret Commins, Political Science, Queens University of
Charlotte.
Panel 8: Race and Education: Diasporic Dialogues (Rm 263)
 Nana Brantuo, University of Maryland, College Park:
“Examining the Migratory Experiences of African International
Students in Cuba”
 Andréia Lisboa de Sousa, University of Texas at Austin:
“Political Struggle and Activism in Latin America: Building
New Spaces and Networks”
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Conference Program
Friday, May 1st 2015 – UNCC Student Union
Silvia Lorenso, UNC Chapel Hill, and Nirlene Nepomuceno,
Universidade Federal da Bahia: “The Politics of Race and Education in Brazil: An African Diaspora Perspective”
Chair: Sonya Ramsey, History Department, UNC Charlotte

10:00 – 10:15am Coffee Break (Room 340)
10:15 – 11:30am – Second Session
Panel 9: Migrations Across Borders (Rm 261)
 Thabisile Griffin, University of California at Los Angeles, “The
Garifuna: Trans-Caribbean Memory, Imagination and Resistance”
 Marissa Nichols, University of North Carolina at Charlotte:
“Women and Domestic Work Across the U.S.-Mexico Border,
1920-1960”
 Paula Andrade, University of North Carolina at Charlotte:
“Unaccompanied Alien Children and DACA: Reflections and
(De)Constructions”
Chair: Greg Weeks, Political Science, UNC Charlotte
Panel 10: Racial Images and Identities in Women Spaces (Rm 263)
 Vanessa Castañeda, Tulane University: “Making the Regional
National: Baianas de Acarajé as Sites of Culture and Identity”
 Wendi Muse, New York University: “Exported Women, Domestic Discontent: Mulatas de Exportação and Contestations of
Racial Democracy in Brazil under Military Rule”
 Mariana Irby, Leslie Tjing, and Jamie Thomas, Swarthmore
University: “Protest, Memory, and Self in Brown and Black Diasporas at a Small Liberal Arts College”
Chair: Cheryl Hicks, History Department, UNC Charlotte
11:45 – 1:00 pm Lunch (Room 340 – Only For Presenters)
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10 – 3pm Río de la Plata Workshop Session 2 (Room 264).
Commentator: Carolina Zumaglini, Flordia International University
 10:00-11:00am Fabricio Prado College of William and Mary,
“Hemispheric Connections: United States-South Atlantic Networks in the Age of Atlantic”
 11:00-12:00pm Kris Jones, Independent Scholar, “Feeding the
Plantation: Cimarrones, Charqui, and Indians in the early
1800s”
 12-l:00pm Lunch Break
 1:00-2:00pm Denise Soares de Moura, Universidade Paulista,
“Trans-imperial agents in the Iberian Atlantic: the Case of
Antonio da Silveira Peixoto”
 2:00-3:00pm Enrique Cotelo, University of Mississippi, “The
Slave Maria Does Not Understand What We Say:” Frontier
Languages, Judicial Reforms and National Identity at the Bordered Lands of Uruguay and Brazil, 1870-1879”
1:00 – 2:45pm – Documentary screening: Hip-hop in Argentina and the African Diaspora (Movie Theater).
 Documentary director Diane Ghogomu, Harvard University
 Christopher Dennis, University of North Carolina at Wilmington
 Charles Pinckney, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Chair: Debra Smith, Africana Studies, UNC Charlotte
3 – 5:00pm – Roundtable with Guest Speakers (Room 340):
Space and Region in the African Diaspora and Latin America. Afro-Latino Identity: Brown, Black or In-Between
 Tiffany Joseph, Stony Brook University
 Andrea Queeley, Florida International University
 Ted Richardson, Independent Photojournalist
 Alejandro de la Fuente, Harvard University
 Moderator: Erika Edwards, UNC Charlotte
5:00-5:30pm Coffee Break (Rooms 262 and 266)
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5:30pm – Keynote Address (Room 340):
Alejandro de la Fuente
Robert W. Bliss Professor, Latin American History and Economics
Afro-Latin American Research Institute, Director
Harvard University
“Afro-Latinos and Afro-Latin American Studies:
Connecting the Dots”
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Keynote Speakers:
George Reid Andrews: A specialist in Afro-Latin America, prof. Andrews has made a series of pioneering and path-breaking contributions to the
study of Latin American Afro-descendants, such as The Afro-Argentines
of Buenos Aires, 1800-1900 (1980), Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1988 (1991), Blackness in the White Nation: A History of Afro-Uruguay (2010), and his masterful synthesis Afro-Latin
America, 1800-2000 (2004). In addition to holding a distinguished record
of service and teaching in national and international organizations, he is the
recipient of multiple awards, such as the Arthur P. Whitaker Prize (2005
and 2011), the Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship (2001), the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1996-97), and many others. His
current research deals with the study of racial impacts of social policies in Brazil, from 1990 to the present.
Alejandro de la Fuente: A historian of Latin America and the Caribbean who specializes in the study of comparative slavery and race relations,
Alejandro de la Fuente is the Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics and Professor of African and African American
Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2008),
and of A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in TwentiethCentury Cuba (University of North Carolina Press, 2001). He is also the
curator of two art exhibits dealing with issues of race: Queloides: Race and
Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art (2010-12) and Grupo Antillano: The Art of Afro-Cuba (ongoing). He is also the founding Director of
the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at Harvard, as well as faculty Co
-Chair, along with Professor Jorge Domínguez, of the Cuban Studies Program.
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