This talk follows Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Watara, a Timbuktu-born teenager who was enslaved in Jamaica from 1805 to 1834. Upon securing his manumission, Watara undertook a trans-Atlantic and trans-Saharan journey, in a bid to return home. A close examination of Watara’s words and writings about him, and a reconstruction of his trajectory, provides insight into […]
Marc Hertzman, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign Flying Home? Palmares and the Afterlife Most histories of Palmares, the sprawling collection of settlements in Brazil that became perhaps history’s largest fugitive slave society, end in 1695, when colonial forces assassinated the famous rebel leader Zumbi. My book project plays the story forward […]
Marc Hertzman, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign Flying Home? Palmares and the Afterlife Most histories of Palmares, the sprawling collection of settlements in Brazil that became perhaps history’s largest fugitive slave society, end in 1695, when colonial forces assassinated the famous rebel leader Zumbi. My book project plays the story forward […]
In 1750, when the Brazilian border expanded by several orders of magnitude, Portuguese Crown officials, administrators, and men of science received the news with hope and apprehension. While the growth of frontiers of Portugal’s possession in the Americas was celebrated, it also presented formidable challenges for settlement. How could a diminutive metropole whose empire stretched […]
Mika Lior, Assistant Professor of Performing Arts at the University of Malta "Circling With/In: Choreographies of Gendered & Regendered Agency in Bahian Candomblé" Based on history, dance studies methodologies and critical ethnography, this paper addresses choreographies of invocation and incorporation in the Afro-Brazilian ritual practice of Candomblé through the lens of indigenous feminisms and choreographic analysis. […]
