Past Events

Spring 2005

13-14 May
Atlantic History Workshop 2005: The Atlantic in the Age of Revolution
Open to faculty & graduate students, RSVP only to:
Eric D. Duke at atlantic@msu.edu
For additional information: http://www.msu.edu/~atlantic/index.htm#sched

Friday, 13 May
John Willy Room, Kellogg Center, Michigan State University
9:00 – 12:00 - The South Atlantic in the Age of Revolution
Insolence and Liberty: Anglo-Fante Relations During the Age of Revolution
Ty M. Reese, University of North Dakota
The development of an ideology of collective political violence amongst Grenada’s revolutionaries, 1784-1795
Curtis Michael Jacobs, Harrison College (Bridgetown, Barbados) and University of the West Indies (Cave Hill,
Barbados)
The 'Pardo Question': Political and Ideological struggle on Free Coloreds equality during the Revolution of Caracas, 1810-1812
Alejandro E. Gómez, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris, France) and Universidad Simon Bolivar (Caracas, Venezuela)
Commentator: Elizabeth Colwill, San Diego State University
2:30-4:30 - The Living and the Dead in the Caribbean
In the Wake of the Zong: Graveyards, Greed and the Soul of the British Empire
Vincent Brown, Harvard University
Makandal and the Medical Care of Animals: The Veterinarians Who Inspired the Haitian Revolution
Karol K. Weaver, Susquehanna University
Commentator: Julie Saville, University of Chicago

Saturday, 14 May
1014 Tisch Hall, 434 S. State Street, Department of History, University of Michigan (download map)
10:30 – 12:30 - Identities in Empire
Social Actors and Institutions of Métissage I – The French State: Discrepancies Between Policy Statements and Realities of Métissage
Devrim Karahasan, European University Institute (Florence, Italy)
Conspiracy, Coercion, and Community in the Acadian Colony of Poitou, 1773-1775
Christopher Hodson, Northwestern University
Commentator: Christine Daniels, Michigan State University
2:30 – 4:30 - Making Africa in America
African Identity at the Beginning of the New Century: Politics, Religion and Colonization
James Sidbury, University of Texas
The Nsanda Tree Transplanted: Kongo Cults of Affliction and Slave Identity in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo
Robert Slenes, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (University of São Paulo at Campinas)
Commentator: Paul Johnson, University of Michigan

Sponsored by the Departments of History at Michigan State University & University of Michigan, with the generous support of the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (MSU), Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program (UM), & the Atlantic Studies Initiative.

 

WINTER 2005

Friday, 21 January
6:30pm
Michigan Union, Anderson D (1st floor)
Colloquium: What is the Atlantic?

Atlantic Slavery and the Culture of Taste
Simon Gikandi (English, Princeton University)

This event is open to ASI faculty & graduate students, RSVP only.

Wednesday, 2 February
5:30pm
Rackham Amphitheater (4th Floor)
Collegiate Lecture: Dangerous Doubles
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg (Mary Frances Berry Collegiate Professor of History and American Culture)

Host Department: Department of History

Friday, 18 February
6:30pm
Michigan League, Koessler Room
Colloquium: What is the Atlantic?

The Past As a Wound and the Past As a Mask: Remembering Slavery in the French Caribbean

Michel Giraud (Centre de Recherche sur les Pouvoirs Locaux dans la Caraibe)

This event is open to ASI faculty & graduate students, RSVP only.

Monday, 21 February
1360 East Hall, 525 East University
10-11:30am
Urban Culture and Civic Identities in Iberia and Iberoamerica
Richard L. Kagan (Professor of History and Romance Languages and Literatures, The Johns Hopkins University)

Co-sponsored by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program and Department of History.

Friday-Sunday 11-13 March
Friday March 11 (11:00 AM-3:00 PM) – First Floor Ballroom Haven Hall
Saturday March 12 (1:00-5:00 PM) AC Performance Space G634 Haven Hall;
Sunday March 13 (1:00-5:00 PM) - AC Performance Space G634 Haven Hall
The Program in American Culture, the Program in Latino/a Studies and The Center for World Performance Studies present:
Performance Workshop: Performing the Self: Taking It Very Personal (What You See Is Just Not What You Get)
Josefina Baez (Winter 2005 Artist in Residence)

Free and open to all University of Michigan students, faculty, and staff. Participants are required to attend all three days and to wear comfortable clothes. Prior registration encouraged. Maximum number of participants: 20. For more information and to sign up, please contact:
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, lawrlafo@umich.edu

Josefina Baez is an Afro-Dominican actor, writer, and educator from La Romana, Dominican Republic, who has lived for many years in New York City. She is the founder and director of Latinarte's Ay Ombe Theatre Troupe Collective.

Residence generously co-sponsored by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost , Rackham School of Graduate Studies, the Atlantic Studies Initiative, the Institute for Research on Women, Arts at Michigan, Program in Latin American & Caribbean Studies, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, and the Department of Theatre and Drama.

16-19 March
The Michigan League
Conference: Rhythms of the Atlantic World: Rituals and Remembrances

Wednesday, 16 March
Vandenberg Room (2d floor)

4:00pm Opening and Welcome

4:30-6:30pm
ARTS OF THE EARLY MODERN ATLANTIC

Chair: Lester Monts (Senior Vice-Provost for Academic Affairs; Senior Counselor to the President for the Arts, Diversity, and Undergraduate Affairs; and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Ethnomusicology)

Catherine Clément (writer, philosopher)
Iberic Jews, African Griots, and Musical Instruments in Senegal in the Sixteenth Century

Comment: Mamadou Diouf (Professor, Department of History, and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies)

5:30-6:30pm Cynthia Schmidt (College of Music, University of North Texas)
Music, Memory, and Transatlantic Dialogues

Comment: Scottie Parrish (Assistant Professor, Department of English)

7:15-9:00pm Keynote Speaker: Susan Foster (Professor, Department of World Arts and Cultures, UCLA) Muscle/Memory or How to Put Your Foot Down

*****
Thursday, 17 March
Hussey Room (2d floor)

10:00-11:45am
READING STRUCTURES: TRANSATLANTIC ARCHITECTURAL JOURNEYS

Chair: Magdalena Zaborowska (Associate Professor, Program in American Culture, and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies)

Peter Mark (Professor, Department of Art History, Wesleyan University)
The African roots of 'Portuguese style' architecture in 17th-century Senegal

Coleman Jordan (Assistant Professor of Architecture, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning)
Building Black Bondage: An Autobiographic Space

Comment: Will Glover (Assistant Professor of Architecture, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning)

12:00-1:30pm Keynote Speaker: Yvonne Daniel (Professor Emerita of Dance and Afro-American Studies, Smith College)
Dancing Wisdom in Haiti, Cuba, and Bahia

1:45-3:45pm
BODY KNOWLEDGE, BODY MEMORY: DANCE IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

Chair: Frieda Ekotto (Associate Professor, Departments of Romance Languages and Literatures, and Comparative Literature)

Jay Cook (Associate Professor, Program in American Culture, and Department of History)
Master Juba: A Black Dancer’s Journey through the Circumatlantic Show Trade

Millery Polyné (Assistant Professor, College of Staten Island/CUNY)
Performing Haiti: Mouvement Folklorique Haïtienne, Tourism and the Technical Training of Haitian Dancers

Lucia Suarez (Assistant Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures)
Dance, Community, and Citizenship

Comment: Umi Vaughan (Doctoral Candidate, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, Department of Anthropology)

4:00-5:00pm Performance by and Conversation with Papa Hanne Senegalese/African-American Dance Company Detroit, MI

7:30-9:30pm
Rackham Assembly Hall, 4th floor, 915 E. Washington
Keynote Speaker: Joseph Roach (Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor of Theater and English, Yale University)
Outlaw Glamour: Time Pirates of the Caribbean

*********
Friday, 18 March
Hussey Room (2d Floor)

10:00am-12:00pm
CARNIVAL: THE MANY-COLORED MESSENGER

Chair: Sueann Caulfield (Associate Professor, Department of History, and Residential College; and Director, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program)

Luis Felipe de Alencastro (Center for Brazilian Studies, University of Paris IV, Sorbonne)
Out of the Show: The Introduction of “Civilized Carnival” in 19 th Century Brazil

Keith Cartwright (Assistant Professor, English Department, University of North Florida)
Travels, Shouts, Saraka: Geechee Ministration and Spiritual Parentage in the Initiation of Afro-Atlantic Baptist Congregations

Jarrod Hayes (Associate Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures)
Reading Race in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans: Sidonie de la Houssaye's Les quarteronnes de la Nouvelle Orleans and American Studies in French

Comment: Martha S. Jones (Assistant Professor, Department of History, and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies; and Visiting Assistant Professor, Law School)

12:30-2:00pm Keynote Speaker: Robert Farris Thompson (Trumbull Professor of the History of Art, Yale University)
Tango: The Art History of Love

2:15-4:30pm
REMEMBRANCES: RELIGION AND MUSIC

Chair: Phil Deloria (Director and Professor, Program in American Culture; Associate Professor, History)

Paul Johnson (Associate Professor, Center for Afroamerican and African Studies)
Who Speaks for Tradition? Garifuna Ritual at Home and in Diaspora

James F. Searing (Professor, Department of History, University of Illinois-Chicago)
Rhythms of Senegal's Atlantic Islands: Signares, Sailors, and Musical Metissage on Saint-Louis and Goree

Deborah Smith Pollard (Associate Professor of English and Humanities, University of Michigan-Dearborn)
"The Women Have on All of Their Clothes": Un(w)rapping Holy Hip Hop

Erol Josue (Oungan, Haiti/France)
The Songs of Vodou: A Living Archive

Comment: Marianetta Porter (Associate Professor, School of Art and Design)

5:00-6:00pm Conversation with and Performance by Trinidad Tripoli Steel Band

******
Saturday, 19 March
Koessler Room (3d Floor)

10:00am-12:00pm
COMPOSITIONS IN BLACK: REMEMBERING JAZZ GREAT ARTHUR CUNNINGHAM

Chair: Roland Vazquez (Lecturer, Jazz & Improvisation Department, School of Music; and Program in American Culture)

John Ellis (Assistant Professor, Piano Pedagogy, School of Music)
Call Me What You Will; Call My Music Music: The Life and Works of Arthur Cunningham

Comment: Kevin Gaines (Associate Professor, Department of History, and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies); and Mark Clague (Assistant Professor of Musicology, School of Music; Associate Director, American Music Institute; and Faculty Associate, Program in American Culture)

12:00-1:00pm Musical Performance by the Mosaic Youth Theater Company of Detroit

1:30-3:30pm
CONTEMPORARY SOUNDS OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC: CIRCUM-ATLANTIC CONNECTIONS

Chair: Ifeoma Nwankwo (Assistant Professor, Department of English, and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies)

Michel Ralph (Doctoral Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago)
An Oppositional Option: Rapping to Unravel Postcolonial Fantasy

Shanesha R. F. Brooks (Doctoral Candidate, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, Program in American Culture)
Cultural Crossroads: An Exploration of African-American and Afro-Cuban Hip-Hop and Religious Traditions

Halifu Osumare (Assistant Professor of Dance and American Culture Studies, Bowling Green State University)
Hip Hop Border Crossings: Cuba Raperos and Brazilian Favelas

Umi Vaughan (Doctoral Candidate, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, Department of Anthropology)
Timba Brava: Maroon Music in Cuba

Comment: Glenda Dickerson (Professor, Department of Theater & Drama, School of Music)

4:00-6:00pm
ATLANTIC RHYTHMS: CONTEMPORARY CROSSINGS

Chair: Nadine Naber (Assistant Professor, Program in American Culture, and Women’s Studies; and Adjunct Assistant Professor, Anthropology)

Patricia Moonsammy (Doctoral Candidate, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, Department of Anthropology)
Warriors of the Word: Rapso in a Festival Culture

Raquel Z. Rivera (Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology and Antoropology, Tufts University)
New York Caribbean Latinos: Re-Imagining Tradition in Hip Hop, Reggaeton and Roots Music

DJ Emancipation (Graduate Student, Program in Modern Thought & Literature, Stanford University)
All Mixed Up: Pan Afro Arabi Roots, Breakbeats, and the Sounds of Resistance

Comment: Paul Anderson (Assistant Professor, Program in American Culture, and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies)

Co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program

Friday-Saturday, 1-2 April
9:00am-8:00pm
Conference: What’s New?: Transatlantic Luso-Spanish Debates and the Market of Ideas
Rackham Assembly Hall (915 E. Washington, 4th floor)

Co-sponsored with the Departments of Romance Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature, Institute for the Humanities, International Institute, Institute on Women and Gender, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Office of the Vice President for Research, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, & the Rackham School of Graduate Studies.

Contact: April Caldwell
For additional information: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/rll/eventsnews/events.html

 

Saturday, 2 April
8:30pm
Rackham Auditorium (4th floor)
915 East Washington Street
Domicanish: Language Acquisition With Soul
written and performed by Josefina Baez, King Chavez Parks Visiting Professor

This event is free and open to the public.

Co-sponsored with the Center for World Performance Studies, the Program in American Culture and Department of Romance Languages and Literatures; with the generous support of the Office of the Provost, Rackham School of Graduate Studies, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Arts at Michigan, Program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Department of Theatre & Drama

Tuesday, 5 April
6:30pm
Michigan League, Michigan Room
Colloquium: What is the Atlantic?

On the Expendability of (Human) Lives: The Simultaneous Emergence of the Atlantic Commercial Circuits and theColonial Matrix of Power

Walter Mignolo (William H. Wannamaker Professor Director, Center for Global Studies and the Humanities John Hope Franklin Center for International and Interdisciplinary Studies, Duke University)

This event is open to ASI faculty & graduate students, RSVP only.

Wednesday, 6 April
3:30pm
4701 Haven Hall
Lecture and Exhibit: Christopher Cozier

Rethinking the Local: The Axis of the Global

An artist of international standing, Christopher Cozier is a leading contemporary artist who works in the Caribbean and engages the global. Using a vocabulary of everyday objects, his drawings, installations, performances and videos speak emphatically about the construction of identity and nationhood and to issues of power and knowledge production in our multi-cultural world.  Cozier is also a curator and critic. Among his publications are: Searching For a Way Out (Massachusetts Review, Autumn-Winter 1994) and Between Narrative and Other Spaces in (Small Axe, September 1999).

Sponsored by the Atlantic Studies Initiative, the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, and the School of Art and Design, and with support from the Department of the History of Art

Wednesday, 6 April
5:00pm
3512 Haven Hall
Lecture by Josefina Baez, King Chavez Parks Visiting Professor

Dominican-York, The Ride, Route 15

Co-sponsored by the Center for World Performance Studies, and Program in American Culture and Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

 

22-23 April
International Institute, 1644 School of Social Work Building, 1080 S. University
Conference: The State of Gender and History Research in Latin American History

Organized by LACS and History doctoral students and faculty as part of the U-M program Global Turns and Gender Returns, this conference focuses on the state of gender and history research in Latin America, providing a forum for dialogue among scholars working from several different institutions across the Americas. For additional information, see:  http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/lacs/genderhistory05/

Friday, 22 April

10:00-11:30am Panel 1 - Gender and Nation

Chair: Jesse Hofnung-Garskoff

Commentator: Alexandra Stern

Panelists: Marie Cruz (University of Michigan), Inhabiting la Isla Nena: Gender Discourses and Geographical Imaginings in Vieques, Puerto Rico
Valeria Pita (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina), The Hospice for Mad Women and the Debates on Nation-Building and Citizenship During the Era of the República de la Opinión. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1852-1862

Rebekah Pite (University of Michigan), Teaching Modern Argentine Housewives How to Cook: Doña Petrona Enters the Corporate Kitchen, 1928-1934

~Lunch~

1:30-3:00pm Panel 2 - Gender and Sexuality

Chair: Neil Safier

Commentator: Michele Mitchell

Panelists: Júnia Ferreira Furtado (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil), Black Pearls: Freed Women of Color in the Diamond District
Sarah Arvey (University of Michigan), “Good Customs” and Illicit Sexuality in Cuba, 1933-58

Maria Emma Mannarelli (National University of San Marcos, Peru), The Written Word, Women, and Secularization in Peru, 1890-1925

~Coffee Break~

3:30-5:00pm Panel 3 - Gender and Law

Panelists: Astrid Cubano Iguina (University of Puerto Rico), Negotiating Masculinity and Citizenship in Nineteenth Century Puerto Rico: Narratives of Gender and Propriety in the Court of Law
Victoria Castillo (University of Michigan), La Mujer India--the Solution to the "Indian Problem"?: Race and Gender in Early Twentieth-Century Peru
Cristiana Schettini Pereira (University of Campinas, Brazil), Slavery in White and Black: Debates Over Sexual Labor in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro at the End of the Nineteenth Century

Saturday, 23 April

11:00am-12:30pm Panel 4 – Gender Bending/Gender Norms

Chair: Helmut Puff

Commentator: Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes

Panelists: María del Carmen Baerga Santini (University of Puerto Rico), Subversive Body, Seductive Norm: A Chapter in the History of Heterosexuality in Puerto Rico

Isabel Cordova (University of Michigan), SettingThem “Straight”: Social Work Interventions with “Deviant” Youth in Puerto Rico, 1950s-1960s

Gabriela Cano (Autonomous University of Mexico, DF, Mexico), Colonel’s Robles Intimate Joy. Gender Battles in the Mexican Revolution

~Lunch~

2:30-4:30pm Roundtable Discussion on the State of History and Gender Research in Latin America

Chair: Sueann Caulfield

All international conference presenters will comment on their experiences in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Puerto Rico.

Co-sponsored by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts; Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies; Institute for Research on Women and Gender's Global Turns and Gender Returns; Department of History; the Center for the History of Medicine, the Science, Technology, and Society Program; and the Women's Studies Program.

* * * * * * *

Fall 2004

13-29 September
9:00am-5:00pm
Osterman Common Room, Rackham Building, 915 E Washington, Ann Arbor
LOST FILM/LOST ANCESTORS: Archival Photographs from Zululand
From the private collection of Peter Davis
Sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities
This event is co-sponsored by the Atlantic Studies Initiative

Filmmaker Peter Davis presents production stills and actual film images from the 1927 silent film, Siliva the Zulu, the first film to be made with an all-Black cast in sub-Saharan Africa. Never before shown in the United States, the exhibition also includes rare Zulu portraits by Italian ethnographer Lidio Cipriani, a crew member of the original Siliva film expedition.

Tuesday, 21 September, 12:00-1:30pm
Brown Bag Lecture

Tuesday, 21 September, 4:00 - 6:00pm
Film Screening: Siliva the Zulu:

Wednesday, 22 September, 4:30 - 6:30pm
Reception and Gallery Talk:

Wednesday, 29 September
7:00-9:30pm
Michigan League, Hussey Room
Colloquium: What is the Atlantic?

Africa and the Atlantic

Mamadou Diouf (Department of History and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, UM)

This event is open to ASI faculty & graduate students, RSVP only.

Friday, 29 October
7:00 pm
Video and Performance Studio, James and Ann Duderstadt Center
THE PROJECT FOR TRANSFORMING THRU PERFORMING: re/placing Black womanly images

SAPPHIRE’S NEW SHOE: the Kitchen Table Summit

Free and open to the public.
Co-sponsored with the Center for World Performance Studies

THE PROJECT FOR TRANSFORMING THRU PERFORMING: re/placing Black womanly images is supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation.

The kitchen table summit takes place at the house of “Mama Rice”. She has a starry array of dinner guests, including Condoleezza, her cousin Constance, Marian Anderson, Hannah Craft, Aunt Jemima, Black Pearl (a Liberian girl warrior), Edwidge Danticat and the ghosts of the Atlantic slave trade.

Friday, 5 November
6:30-9:30pm
Michigan League, Kalamazoo Room
Colloquium: What is the Atlantic?

Praisesongs of the Diaspora: the lingering Atlantic in Caribbean family narratives

Mary Chamberlain (History, Oxford Brookes University)

This event is open to ASI faculty & graduate students, RSVP only.

18 November
4:00pm
Michigan Room, Michigan League
The Global Ethnic Literatures Seminar Series:
Afro-Cuba, Afro-Cubans, and Afro-Cubanía: How Black is Cuba Becoming?
Pedro Pérez-Sarduy (Trinity College)

18-19 November
In, Around and Beyond Haile Gerima’s Sankofa (1992): An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Spaces, Places, and Images of Slavery

Thursday, 18 November
7:00pm
American Culture Media Room, 3512 Haven Hall
Film screening: Sankofa (dir. Haile Gerima, 1992)

Friday, 19 November
3:00-5:00pm
International Institute, 1080 S University, 1636 SSWB
Panel: A Sancocho of Interpretations and Interventions

Moderator: Catherine Benamou (Program in American Culture, University of Michigan)

Joanne Braxton (Department of English, The College of William and Mary)
To Africa and Back Again: My Experience as an Academic Tourist on West Africa’s Slave Coast

Lucia Saks (Film & Video Studies, University of Michigan) Bifurcations of Slave Histories: 'Sankofa' in South Africa

Michael Martin (Ethnic Studies, Bowling Green State University)
Slavery in the colonial/neo-colonial matrix: the “decisive moment” in Gillo Pontecorvo’s Burn! (Queimada)

Catherine Benamou (American Culture, University of Michigan)
Sankofa in Geocultural Context: Marxist and Tropicalist Treatments of Slavery in Cuban and Brazilian Cinema

Pedro Pérez Sarduy (Trinity College)
The Contemporary Cuban View: The Films of Rigoberto López

5:30pm
American Culture Gallery, Haven Hall G634
An Exhibition of Photographs by Joanne Braxton: African Odyssey: Slave Castles on the West Coast of Africa as Sites of Memory

Co-sponsored by the Program in American Culture and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies.

2 December
4:00-7:00pm
Michigan League, Hussey Room
Sounds of the Black Atlantic: Contemporary Music of Latin America and the Caribbean

4:00-5:00
Panel I: Cuban Jazz Journeys: The Hilario Duran Trio

Chair: Roland Vazquez (Jazz and Improvisational Studies, School of Music, UM)

Hilario Duran Trio (Hilario Duran, Roberto Occhipinti, and Ernesto Simpson)

Hilario Duran is one of Cuba 's premier exponents of Latin Jazz, renowned for his piano playing and composing skills. His impressive track record speaks for itself. Durán has worked with some of the world's giants of jazz, including Dizzy Gillespie and Arturo Sandoval.

5:15-7:15pm
Panel II: Music and Youth Culture in Cuba, Brazil, and the United States

Chair: Ifeoma C. K. Nwankwo (Department of English and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, UM)

Lesley Feracho (Department of Spanish and Institute for African-American Studies, University of Georgia)
Redefining the Nation: Hip Hop and the Collective Identity

Livio Sansone (Federal University of Bahia)
Youth Culture and Racial Identity in Bahia

Maria Elena Cepeda (Hispanic and Latin American Studies, Macalester College)
A Miami Sound Machine: Deconstructing the Latin(o) Music "Boom" of the Late '90s

Discussants: Robin Wilson (Dance Department, School of Music, UM); Mary Catherine Smith (Host, Brazilian Sol, WEMU); Leila Barbosa (Founder, The Baixo Santa do Alto Glória Cultural Pharmacy, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

With the generous support of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program.

8:00pm
Kerrytown Concert House
415 N. Fourth Avenue
Performance: The Hilario Duran Trio
This is a paid performance open to the public.

9 December
6:30pm
Michigan League, Hussey Room
Colloquium: What is the Atlantic?

Stories Told in Sunday School
Marianetta Porter (School of Art & Design, UM)

This event is open to ASI faculty & graduate students, RSVP only.

Fall 2003

Thursday October 2
4:00-6:00pm
3512 Haven Hall
Public lecture by Irene Ramalho Santos (Professor of English and American Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal, and visiting professor, Comparative Literature, University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Atlanticism and the Poets: Fernando Pessoa, Walt Whitman,
Hart Crane
With the generous support of the Departments of American Culture and English, & the Center for European Studies

Irene Ramalho Santos has long been active in the European Association of American Studies and the American Studies Association, and is currently co-chair of the Task Force for International Women in American Studies. Educated at Coimbra and at Yale, she is the author of many publications, with a focus on modernism and modern poetry in the United States and Portugal. Her most recent work is Atlantic Poets: Fernando Pessoa's Turn in Anglo-American Modernism.

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) is widely regarded as Portugal's greatest poet. in her groundbreaking new study, Irene Ramalho Santos places Pessoa in a transatlantic literary context, revealing the rich interconnections between his work and that of Anglo-American modernists ranging from Whitman to Crane and Rich. In the process, she reveals Pessoa himself to be a major figure of the modernist—and transatlantic—tradition.

This event is free and open to the public.
Contact ASI: II.ASI@umich.edu

Friday 3 October 2003
12:00-2:00pm
Department of English, 3154 Angell Hall
U.S. Literatures and Cultures Consortium Workshop with Irene Ramalho Santos
American Studies as Traveling Culture

By reservation only; precirculated paper required
Contact USISTS: Kelly Williams kellydw@umich.edu

 

Monday, 20 October
6:00-8:30pm
Lorch Auditorium, 140 Lorch Hall

QUEER ATLANTIC SERIES 2 presents
Grass-Roots Brazil: The Films of Eunice Gutman

A Screening of:
So no Carnaval / Only During Carnival (1982, 12 min) Two differing perspectives on the common practice of transvestitism during the early Carnival in Rio de Janeiro.

Amores de Rua /Street Lovers (1994, 27 min) A fresh look at female and transvestite prostitution, and the measures they themselves have taken to empower and protect each other. Honorable mention, NY Film Festival; Best Video, Jornada Internacional de Videos e Filmes da Bahia, Brazil; First Prize, Films and Videos of Latin America and the Caribbean, La Mujer y El Cine Festival, Mar del Plata, Argentina.

O Outro Lado do Amor/The Other Side of Love (2001, 37 min) Interviews and demonstrations on the subject of AIDS in Brazil during the 1990s. HIV positives, medical experts, and transvestites interweave their impressions and experiences of the disease.

Segredos de Amor/Love’s Secrets (1999, 31 min) An intimate portrait of a lesbian couple in Rio de Janeiro culminates in interviews with marchers with the international Gay and Lesbian Association on the city’s main streets. One of the first Brazilian films to openly address homosexuality from an unambiguously lesbian point of view.

Followed by a Q & A with the director. Since studying film at INSAS in Brussels, Belgium, award-winning documentary filmmaker Eunice Gutman has documented the public emergence of the feminist, gay rights, Afro-Brazilian, and community-based development movements since the late 1970s in her native Brazil. Her strong commitment to participatory democracy and her close relationship to nongovernmental organizations working on local community-oriented projects has given her films a freshness and insight into the experiences of marginal populations in urban areas of the Central South, especially of those who inhabit the burgeoning favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Ms. Gutman’s short films, which artfully combine interviews, archival footage, verite portrayals, and testimonials, trace a chronicle of the struggle for the civil rights and basic needs of women, the poor, and queer communities, that has stimulated an interest in her work as far as Canada, the United States, China, Europe, and the Middle East.

Sponsored by the UM Atlantic Studies Initiative, Program in Film & Video Studies, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, Office of Lesbian Gay Bisexual & Transgender Affairs, Dept. of Romance Languages & Literatures, and the Women’s Studies Program; and by the Dept. of Ethnic Studies at Bowling Green State University.

Winter 2004

Thursday, January 8 - Saturday January 10
Conference: Covering U.S. Empire
Michigan League

The University of Michigan American Culture Workshop and Atlantic Studies Initiative present:

Featuring Keynote Speakers:

AMY KAPLAN (English, University of Pennsylvania, & President, American Studies Association)
THE QUESTION OF EMPIRE TODAY

DAVID SHIELDS (McClintock Professor of Southern Letters, English, University of South Carolina)
SONS OF THE DRAGON: HEROIC MANHOOD AND THE GROUNDS OF ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIALISM IN THE NEW WORLD

NEFERTI TADIAR (History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz)
CULTURES AGAINST EMPIRE

* * * * * * *

"Thomas Jefferson, the authors of the Federalist, and the other
ideological founders of the United States . . . believed they were
creating on the other side of the Atlantic a new Empire with open, expanding frontiers, where power would be effectively distributed in networks. This imperial idea has survived and matured throughout the history of the United States constitution and has emerged now on a global scale in its fully realized form. . . Our political task . . . is not simply to resist these processes but to reorganize them and redirect them toward new ends." (Hardt and Negri, EMPIRE)

Wednesday 7 January

American Culture, 3512 Haven Hall
5:15pm
Film Presentation
Catherine Benamou (American Culture & Film and Video Studies)
Cine-Tropes and Gazes of Empire, 1898-2000

Thursday 8 January
Michigan League, Vandenberg Room

9:30-11:15am
THE IMPERIAL LIMITS OF BLACK LIBERATION

Chair: Charles Gentry (American Culture)
Paul Robeson's Imperial Masquerade

Ezequiel Berdichevsky (English)
Black Militarism, Martin Delany's 'Blake', and Liberia

Magdalena Zaborowska (American Culture & Center for Afroamerican and African Studies)
James Baldwin and the (Last) White Empire

Sedat Pakay (Hudson Film Works)
Knowing Jimmy

11:30am-1:00pm
American Culture Exhibit Space, G634 Haven Hall
Exhibition Opening
To Imagine a World: Universities and Global Public Cultures
Moderator: Magdalena Zaborowska (American Culture, CAAS)
Sedat Pakay (Hudson Film Works)
Fatma Muge Gocek (Sociology)
Ed West (Art & Design)
Kristin Hass (American Culture)

1:15-3:00pm
COLONIZING SUBJECTS: DISCOURSES AND SUBJECTIVITIES

Carroll Smith Rosenberg (American Culture, History, & Women's Studies)

David Kazanjian (English, Queens College, CUNY)
‘A Barbarian to the Natives’: The African Colonization Movement

Michele Mitchell (History & Center for Afroamerican and African Studies)

Sandra Gunning (American Culture, English, & Center for Afroamerican and African Studies)
Crowther, Delany, and the Politics of African Return

3:25-5:00pm
THE RULE OF FREEDOM: CONSTITUTING EMPIRE THROUGH INTIMACIES OF CIVIL ASSOCIATION

Chair: Mary Kelley (American Culture, History, & Women's Studies)

Shawn Kimmel (American Culture)
'Sampson against the Philistines': The Struggle to Constitute a Democratic Police in Early 19th-Century Philadelphia

Brendan Goff (History)
The Heartland Abroad: The Rotary Club's Mission of Civic Internationalism, 1910-30

5:15-7:00pm
Cassenbaum Keynote Address: THE QUESTION OF EMPIRE TODAY

Amy Kaplan (English, University of Pennsylvania & President, American Studies Association)

Friday 9 January
Michigan league, Hussey Room

9:30-11:15am
BORDER POLICING

Moderator: Maria Cotera (American Culture & Women's Studies)

As'ad Abu Khahlil (Politics/Public Administration, California State University,Stanislaus)
Arab/Muslim Presence in the United States

Alexandra M. Stern (School of Medicine, Center for the History of Medicine, & American Culture)
Tracking the Border Patrol: Masculinity, Race, and Boundary Maintenance in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Scott Kurashige (American Culture & History)
The Aftermath of December 7: Policing Loyalty in the Japanese American Community

Andrew Shryock (Anthropology)
The Other Side of Belonging: Arab Americans on the Edge of National Identity

11:30am-12:30pm
Keynote Address: SONS OF THE DRAGON: Heroic Manhood and the Grounds of Anglo-American Imperialism in the New World

David S. Shields (McClintock Professor of Southern Letters, English, University of South Carolina)

1:15-3:00pm
DEPLOYMENT OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

Moderator: Gregory Dowd (American Culture & History)

Tom Holm (American Indian Studies, University of Arizona)
Why Do They Sign Up? Native American Participation in the U.S. Armed Forces

Christine Delisle (History & Women's Studies)
Interpellating the Native in Guam: Other Forms of Recruitment into Military Discourse

Annalissa Herbert (American Culture)
Uncle Sam In Drag: Masculinist Discourse in Political Cartoons of the Philippine-American War, 1898-1902

James Riding In (American Indian Studies, Arizona State University)
U.S. Imperialism, Colonialism, and the Pawnee Scouts: A Critical Historical Assessment

3:15-5:00pm
THE TEXTURE OF EMPIRE: BODIES, LAND, AND VISION IN LOCAL (HAWAI'I), ASIAN CANADIAN, AND FILIPINO AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURAL PRODUCTION

Chair: Ifeoma Nwankwo (English & Center for Afroamerican and African Studies)

Commentator: Simon Gikandi (English & Center for Afroamerican and African Studies)

Marie Lo (English, Portland State University)
Naturalization Acts: Indigenization and the Ground of Asian Canadian Visibility

Susan Najita (American Culture & English)
Resistant Presences: Leprosy, Race, and Territorial Incorporation in Hawai'i

Sarita See (American Culture & English)
What a Difference an Empire Makes: Filipino American Renaissance

5:15-7:00pm
Keynote Address: CULTURES AGAINST EMPIRE

Neferti Tadiar (History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz)

Saturday 10 January
Michigan league, Koessler Room

9:30-11:15am
GENDER, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, AND COLONIALISM

Commentator: Andrea Smith (American Culture & Women's Studies)

Nadine Naber (American Culture & Women's Studies)
A Place from which to Shout! Transnational Feminist Practices--Palestine, Iraq, the U.S.

Audra Simpson (Anthropology, Cornell University)
The Racialized Life of Treaty: Mohawk Border Crossing, the International Boundary Line and Narratives of Citizenships Colliding

Thomas Abowd (Anthropology, Wayne State University)
Policing Palestine: The Criminalization of Arab Male Youth and the Discourse of Terror

Sheila Contreras (Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, Michigan State University)
The Archeology of the Borderlands: Anthropology, Nationalism and Gloria Anzaldúa's 'mestiza consciousness'

11:30am-1:00pm
Michigan league, Hussey Room

Roundtable Organized by MOMENT Collective:
Activism Within Empire: Challenges and Dilemmas

Participating organizations: MOMENT collective, Rad.art collective, Rainbow Network, Ann Arbor Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Students of Color of Rackham (SCOR), Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), Graduate Employees Union (GEO)

1:15-3:00pm
LANDSCAPES AND MILITARIZATION

Chair & Moderator: Maria Montoya (History & Latina/o Studies)

Leslie Pincus (History)
Okinawa: Under Siege

Marie Cruz (History)
Imaginings of (De)militarized Landscapes: The Case of Vieques, Puerto Rico

Andrew Needham (History)
Power and Promotion: National Defense and the Transformation of Native Landscapes

Najeeb Jan (History & Near Eastern Studies/Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies)
The Empire’s Ulama: Power, Politics and unapologetic Islam

3:15-5:00pm
Roundtable Discussion:
THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES? THINKING HISTORICALLY ABOUT GLOBAL INTEGRATION AND INEQUALITY

Co-Chair: David Pedersen (Anthropology & History)
Co-Chair: Fernando Coronil (Anthropology & History)
Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof (American Culture & History)
Maria Josefina Saldaña-Portillo (English & Ethnic Studies, Brown University)
George Steinmetz (Sociology & Germanic Languages and Literatures)
Ann Stoler (Anthropology & History)

5:00-5:15pm
Closing Remarks

Carroll Smith-Rosenberg (American Culture, History, & Women's Studies)

Funding for the conference has been generously provided by a grant from the Cassenbaum family and by sponsorship from the Atlantic Studies Initiative, the Advanced Study Center, International Institute, Institute for the Humanities, Vice-Provost for Multicultural Affairs, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, Rackham Student Government and Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies

February 5, 2004
4:00pm
Center for Afroamerican and African Studies
4701 Haven Hall

Robert Hill (Professor of History & Editor in Chief, Marcus Garvey & UNIA Papers Project, UCLA African Studies Center)

Prof. Hill will lecture on C. L. R. James's final manuscript on America. The lecture is based on a forthcoming book entitled, C. L. R. James's America and the Making of a Caribbean Intellectual, 1938-1958.

For additional information contact:
Elizabeth James
734.764.9300

 

THURSDAY, 25 MARCH 2004
8:00pm
3512 HAVEN HALL

RHYME AND RESIST! BURNING HIP HOP LYRICS AND SPOKEN WORD SLAM

THE IRON SHEIKH
Palestinian American Hip-Hop Artist

NOURA ERAKAT
Palestinian American Poet and Performance Artist

Organized by SAFE (Students Allied for Freedom and Equality)
Co-sponsored by the Atlantic Studies Initiative, Program in American Culture, & Department of Women's Studies

For additional information:
Nadine Naber
Assistant Professor
Program in American Culture &
Department of Women's Studies
3700 Haven Hall
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor MI 48109
Phone: 734.647.0878
Fax: 734.936.1967

Friday, 2 April 2004,
2:00-4:00pm
International Institute, 1080 S. University, Room 1636

Comparative Perspectives on Race and Citizenship: Slavery and Post-Emancipation Societies in Brazil , Santo Domingo , and the United States

Sidney Chalhoub, Department of History, State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil
Slavery, Race, and Citizenship in Brazil

Richard Turits, Department of History & Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan
Race beyond the Plantation : Histories of Slavery and Freedom in Santo Domingo

Ellen Katz, Law School, University of Michigan
Race, the Political Process, and the Supreme Court: 1874-1887

Sponsored by Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) & the Atlantic Studies Initiative (ASI)

For additional information & to request a copy of the papers:
Elizabeth Martins
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
International Institute
University of Michigan
1080 S. University, Suite 2660
Ann Arbor MI   48109-1106
734.763.0553

 

Fall 2002

Thursday October 3
Center for Afro-American and African Studies (CAAS) C.L.R. James Inaugural Lecture with noted Caribbean author and activist George Lamming
4:00-6:00pm, West Hall, Ehrlicher Room
With support from the Department of History, Department of English, International Institute, Program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Atlantic Studies Initiative.

Friday October 4
Panel on Caribbean Literature with George Lamming, Bill Schwarz (Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London), Simon Gikandi (CAAS/English), and Arlene Keizer (CAAS/English)
10:00am-12:00pm, West Hall, Hayden Lounge

Tuesday October 29
Licit and Illicit Encounters: Spaces of Sociability, Legal Culture, and the World of Slavery
2:30-5:30pm, International Institute, 1080 S. University, Rm 1636
With support from the Slavery, Freedom and the Law project, Program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Atlantic Studies Initiative.

Martha S. Jones (History/CAAS)
The Antebellum Courthouse as an Interracial Social Space: Baltimore, 1850-1860

Jean Hebrard (Ecole des Hautes Etedues en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
Administering Slavery through Writing: The Effect of Administrative Texts on the Social and Juridical Standing of Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (The Province of Bahia)

Keila Grinberg (History, University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Manumission, Gender and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: Liberata's Legal Suit for Freedom
(Available under Resources on the LACS CourseTools site)

Rebecca Scott (History/Law)
The Right to Have Rights: The Oral and the Written in the Claims-Making of Former Slaves in Cuba, 1872-1907
(co-authored with Michael Zeuskel)

Friday, November 1
Film screening and panel discussion with filmmaker Gaston Kaboré
2:00-6:00pm, Modern Language Building (MLB), Auditorium 2
Film and Video Studies, Atlantic Studies Initiative (ASI), Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (CAAS), & the Department of History, with the generous support of The Institute for the Humanities, and facilitated by the Filmmakers-in-Residence Program, Ethnic Studies and Romance Languages Departments, Bowling Green State University, Ohio

Gaston Kaboré is the 2002 recipient of the Genevieve McMillan and Reba Stewart Fellowship for Distinguished Filmmaking at Harvard University. Born in Burkina Faso, Kaboré has maintained a lifelong interest in his family's rural heritage while pursuing studies that eventually led him to the Sorbonne in Paris. There he divided his time between pursuit of an advanced degree in history and his burgeoning interest in the cinema, fed in part by his interest in the representation of Africa abroad. Kaboré served as director of the Centre National du Cinema in Burkina Faso, & has taught at the Institut African d'Etudes Cinematographiques. He is the former president of the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers and is head of FESPACO.

Kaboré’s most recent feature film, which took the prestigious Etalon De Yenenga award at the Pan-African Film Festival in Ougadougou, is a sequel of sorts to his celebrated Wend Kuuni. Set at the beginning of the nineteenth century, deep in a bend of the River Niger, it reprises the title character of the earlier film-the mute orphan boy adopted by a village family, now a young man doted on by his stepparents but shunned as an outsider by the villagers. When his beloved adopted sister falls mysteriously ill, Wend Kuuni is blamed and, desperate to restore her to health, he sets out on an epic journey in search of “lion’s herbs,” the elusive cure described to him by a village elder. While it presents a traditional coming-of-age narrative, the film broaches broader issues that in Kaboré’s view have the capacity either to affirm or to destroy the world and its humanity: acceptance, tolerance, and dialogue on the one hand; fear of the other, defiance, intolerance, and exclusion on the other.

Wednesday, November 20
Public lecture by Ricky A. Kittles (Microbiology, Howard University College of Medicine; Co-Director, Molecular Genetics, National Human Genome Center, Howard University)
The Genetics and Genealogies of African Americans
3:00-5:00pm, International Institute, 1080 S. University, Rm 1636

Tuesday, December 3
Public lecture by Roger C. Echo-Hawk (Repatriation Coordinator, Denver Art Museum)
Repatriation Battlefields: Performing Scholarship Under NAGPRA
4:00-6:00pm, International Institute, 1080 S. University, 2609 SSWB

Roger Echo-Hawk is a Pawnee tribal historian who has worked to gather and preserve recorded oral history and other materials pertaining to Pawnee origins and history. He is the author of Battlefields and burial grounds: the Indian struggle to protect ancestral graves in the United States and Kara Katit Pakutu: exploring the origins of Native America in anthropology and oral traditions.

Winter 2003

Wednesday January 22 - Thursday March 23
2003 MLK Events
Cosponsored with the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (CAAS) and Program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS)
Wednesday January 22
Public lecture by Lillian Allen, poet, activist, scholar
Conditions Critical
4:00-6:00pm, International Institute, 1080 S. University, 1636 SSWB

Thursday January 23
Performance by Lillian Allen, dub poet
4:00pm
CAAS, 4701 Haven Hall

Lillian Allen moved from Spanish Town, Jamaica, to North America in 1969 and emerged as a major influential figure on Canada's cultural landscape. The winner of two Juno awards, she is an internationally acclaimed poet who is recognized as a key originator and leading exponent of dub poetry. In addition, she writes for children and young people and is a writer of plays and short fiction.

Her political themes and depths of vision are woven in an enchanting and unique blend of orality and the written word. Her poetic voice has spread beyond international poetry circles and music scenes into corners of the African Diaspora and across the spectrum of society.

Lillian Allen lives in Toronto and teaches creative writing at the Ontario College of Art and Design. She is the author of Psychic Unrest (Insomiac Press, 1999), Women Do This Everyday: Selected Poems (Women's Press, 1993), Nothing but a Hero (Poetry for Children and Young People), and Why Me?, a childrens book (Women's Press, 1991)). Her recordings include Conditions Critical (Verse to Vinyl, 1988), Freedom and Dance (CD), Nothing but a Hero (Redwood Cultural Work, 1992, tape for children and young people), and Revolutionary Tea Party (Verse to Vinyl, 1986).

Monday 10 March
Rethinking Francophone African Diaspora
4:00-6:00pm
Koessler Room, Michigan League, 911 N. University

The point of departure for rethinking Francophone African Diaspora is Negritude. It is an influential and highly criticized Francophone African literary and political movement founded in Paris in the 1930s by Leopold Sedar Senghor from Senegal, Aime Cesaire from Martinique and Leon Damas from France. Initially established as a reaction to French colonialism and its "civilizing mission," Negritude has been constantly revised and reinvented since its inception. Senghorian Negritude attempted to destroy stereotypes of Africa by engaging those stereotypes and those who created them. Thus he turned to Western discourse in his endeavor to find his way out of Western myths and misconceptions of Africa. One of the primary facets of Senghor's Negritude is race and how race creates difference.

Negritude appeals broadly to questions of identity and self-construction, and ways in which people who have been colonized can find their own voices and how those voices should (and can) be used. Following Senghor's death in December 2001, a re-evaluation of Senghor's contributions to Negritude can be beneficial now to ascertain where the movement is headed. What is the present-day use of the Negritude or post-Negritude discourses? Has Negritude been surpassed? How can one envision the need for or deployment of Negritude in text now? Does Senghor's Negritude still retain its power in discussions concerning Francophone African literature? What are the new issues within the Francophone African Diaspora today

Moderator: Alain Mabanckou, Congolese poet, novelist, literary chronicler, resident of Paris, and currently writer in residence in the Departments of Romance Languages and Literatures and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. He has published several novels, including: Blue-Red-White (African Presence 1998), The burial of my mother (Kaleidoscope, Denmark, 2000), And God alone know how I sleep (African Presence, 2001), and The Negro Grandsons of Vercingétorix (The Plumed Serpent, 2002), in addition to five collections of poetry.

Panelists: Calixte Beyala, Cameroonian author, has published seven novels and a book-length essay Lettre d'une Africaine à ses soeurs occidentals (1995). The first of these novels, C'est le soleil qui m'a brûlée (1988) (The Sun Hath Looked Upon Me) tackles subjects previously taboo on the black continent. Le Petit Prince de Belleville (1992) and its sequel Maman a un amant (1993), deal with lives of African immigrants in Paris. Subsequent works include the essay Lettre d'une Africaine and the novels Assèze l'Africaine (1994) and Les honneurs perdus (1996), the latter of which received the prestigious Prix du roman de l'Académie Française in 1996.

Dany Laferrière was born into Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he practiced journalism under Duvalier. He went into exile in Canada in 1978, and soon after began working on his first novel, How to Make Love to a Negro, which went on to become a feature film. Additional works include Eroshima (1991), Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex (1994), An Aroma of Coffee (1993), which won the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe, Dining With the Dictator (1998), and Le cri des oiseaux fous, which was awarded the literary prize of Marguerite Yourcenar in 2001 He is currently directing his own film version of Dining With the Dictator.

Mamadou Diouf (History and Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan

Frieda Ekotto (Romance Languages and Literatures, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Michigan

With the generous support of the International Institute, Rackham School of Graduate Studies, Atlantic Studies Initiative (ASI), Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (CAAS), Program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS), and Romance Languages and Literatures

Friday March 21 - Saturday March 22
Technologies of Memory: The Atlantic Axis in Early Modernity
International Institute, 1080 S. University, 1636 SSWB

This is the third ASI major symposium on the CircumAtlantic World, exploring representations and memories of what Joseph Roach has termed the American Holocaust--European conquest of America's indigenous peoples and lands; slavery; the Atlantic slave trade.

The early modern Atlantic--the Atlantic in the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries--was the vortex of modernity. Here Europe encountered radical difference and named it new, primitive, exotic and in this way invented itself and its others. These years saw the conquest of the Americas, the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery. It was a time of unspeakable acts, the memories of which have been indefinitely deferred and which remain intensely present.

This conference explores the technologies of memory across the axis of the Americas. It moves from forgetting in Senegal to resistance in the Americas to the invention of race. Papers treat with Mexico, Brazil, the Latin, Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean, Ireland and the Hapsburg Empire. Come explore our interwoven pasts with us.

Friday, 21 March 2003

1:00-1:30pm Introductory remarks: Steven Mullaney (English, University of Michigan) and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg (History, American Culture, and Women's Studies, University of Michigan)

1:30-3:30pm Forging Identities: Encountering the Colonial
Chair: Arlene Keizer (English, University of Michigan)

Jerome Branche (Hispanic Literature, University of Pittsburgh)
Race Making in Latin America: The Syntax of Subpersonhood
Patricia Seed (History, Rice University)
Traveling Words: The Strange Histories of "Race" and "Caste"
Nicholas Canny (History, National University of Ireland, Galway)
Preconceptions and I-witness in Colonial Situations in Early Modern Cultures

3:45-5:15pm Film screening: Asientos (Dir, Francois L. Woukoache; 52min)
Introductory remarks, Julius S. Scott (History and Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan)

Set on Goree Island off the coast of Senegal, a young man, traumatized by the violence he sees embedded in the world around him, seeks refuge from present day strife. Though no pictures captured the brutality of Goree Island's slave trade, it retains memories of profound horror and strength. Thusly, to escape from the violence, he takes refuge in his imagination, and finds himself confronted with a piece of history of the black people--the slave trade.

Saturday, 22 March 2003

9:30am Introductory remarks, Gustavo Verdesio (Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan)

9:45am Keynote address
Walter Mignolo (William Hanes Wannamaker Professor of Romance Studies and Professor of Literature, Cultural Anthropology, and Romance Studies, Duke University)
An Other Paradigm: Second Thoughts on 'The Darker Side of the Renaissance'

11:30am-1:30pm Inscriptions and Mediations, Others and Selves
Chair: Linda Gregerson (English, University of Michigan)

Tom Conley (Romance Languages, Harvard University)
Montaigne and Mnemography
Margo Hendricks (Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz)
"Wild Seed": Generation, Imagination, and Remembering Race
John M. Monteiro (Anthropology, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) Brazil and Visiting Scholar 2003, History and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University)
Inscribing Tupi Memory: Missionary Writings and Amerindian Narratives in Portuguese America
William O'Reilly (History, National University of Ireland, Galway)
Technologies of Mediation: Turks, Moors and Indians in the Early Modern Atlantic World

1:30-2:45pm Graduate student and panelists luncheon discussion

3:00-5:00pm Image, Body, Performance
Chair: Ifeoma Nwanko (English and Afroamerican and African Studies)

Jennifer Morgan (History and Women's Studies, Rutgers University)
More Breasts Than Bodies: Imagining the Early Modern African Woman
Doris L. Garraway (French and Italian, Northwestern University)
Playing with the Devil: Pierre-Corneille Blessebois' "Le Zombi du Grand-Pérou" and the Erotics of Colonialism in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean
Kim F. Hall (Thomas F.X. Mullarkey Chair in Literature, English, Fordham University)
Sugar, Gender and the Circum-Atlantic Performance of Class

The Atlantic Studies Initiative and Medieval and Early Modern Studies, with the generous support of The Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, The International Institute, Department of English, Department of History, Department of Romance Languages, Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, Center for European Studies, Program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the William L. Clements Library

Winter 2002

The Center for Afroamerican and African Studies presents the 15th Annual Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) Symposium, including:
January 17 (Thursday), 4:00-6:00pm, 210 West Hall--
Judith Carney (Geography, University of Southern California, Los Angeles)
Rice, Slaves, and Landscapes of Cultural Memory in the Americas

This event is free & open to the public. Co-sponsored by The Atlantic Studies Initiative (ASI) and Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS). For additional information, contact: Elizabeth James/CAAS <ecnirp@umich.edu> or Damon Williams <mlkteam@umich.edu>, 734.936.1055.

January 18 (Friday), 10:00am-12:00pm, 210 West Hall--
The Center for Afroamerican and African Studies presents a graduate seminar with speaker Judith Carney (Geography, University of Southern California, Los Angeles), TBA.
Co-sponsored by The Atlantic Studies Initiative (ASI) and Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS). For additional information, contact: Elizabeth James/CAAS <ecnirp@umich.edu> or Damon Williams <mlkteam@umich.edu>, 734.936.1055.

February 15-16 (Friday-Saturday), Fri 1:00-4:00pm; Sat 10:00am-4:00pm, International Institute, 2609 SSWB--
Atlantic Studies Initiative, Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies symposium,
Comparative Slaveries: Memory and Representation

Friday 15 February 2002
Introductory remarks: Carroll Smith-Rosenberg (ASI/American Culture/History)
1:00-4:00pm Panel 1: Representation and Memory
Chair: Sandra Gunning (American Culture/English/CAAS)
Respondent: Carina Yervasi (French, Swarthmore College), L. Ross Chambers (Romance Languages and Literatures), Anita Norich (English/Judaic Studies)
Ann Stoler (Anthropology/History), Representation and Memory
Arlene Keizer (English), Contemporary Slave Narratives
Judith Jackson Fossett (English and Program in American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California), The Shadows of Slavery in the Atlantic World

7:00pm Film screening, Lorch Hall 140 (611 Tappan Street; map: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/media/lorchmap.html)--
Pièces d'Identité (Mweze Ngagura, filmmaker; 94min, in French, subtitled). With comments by Mweze Ngagura and Carina Yervasi (French, Swarthmore College).
Winner of the grand prize at the 1999 Pan-African Film Festival (FESPACO). This refreshing and multi-layered comedy full of charming coincidences unfolds in the Congolese expatriate community in Brussels. Behind the simple tale of an African king traveling to the continent in search of his lost daughter lies a provocative examination of class struggles, racism and cultural identity. Filmmaker Mweze Ngagura made this film to speak to those whose families migrated from Africa to Europe and now find themselves with questions about their origins. This film is dedicated to the African diaspora.

Saturday, 16 February 2002
10:30am-1:00pm Panel 2: The Francophone Caribbean
Chair: Jacqueline Francis (History of Art)
Respondent: Ifeoma Nwankwo (English/CAAS)
Doris Garraway (Romance Languages, Northwestern University), Slavery, Race and Reproduction in the French Caribbean: Reading Moreau de Saint-Mery's Description de la partie francaise de Saint-Domingue
Julius Scott (CAAS/History), The Haitian Revolution at Sea
Freida Ekotto (Romance Languages & Literatures), Salvaging Lost Memory of Slavery in Two Caribbean Narratives

2:00-4:00pm Panel 3: Dominant Representations of Slavery
Chair: Penny Von Eschen (History/CAAS)
Respondent: Patricia S. Yaeger (English/Women's Studies)
Catherine Benamou (Film and Video Studies), From Jazz to Samba: Afro-Diasporic Spaces in Orson Welles's Unfinished It's All True
Sterling Stuckey (History, University of California, Riverside), Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville and James Baldwin: Some Cultural Consequences of the Slave Era
Michele Wallace (English, Film Studies, and Women's Studies, City College of New York and City University of New York), The Birth of a Nation: So Well Known Yet So Poorly Understood

March 14 (Thursday) 10:00am-12:00pm, 2433 Mason Hall
Lecture--Joao Luiz Vieira (Professor of Film Studies, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil): Dead-End: Afro-Brazilian Street Kids in the Brazilian "New Old Order"
With generous support from Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Film & Video Studies.

Formerly Director of the Cinematheque of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, Professor Vieira has lectured internationally on a range of topics pertaining to post-war and contemporary Brazilian cinema (at Oxford University, the University of Warwick in the UK, the University of New Mexico and University of Iowa in the United States), and has curated numerous exhibitions of Brazilian cinema at major museum and festival venues in New York, Manchester, England, Hannover, Germany, and Rio de Janeiro. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, Professor Vieira is the editor of Cinema Novo and Beyond (Museum of Modern Art, 1998), and the author of various articles and chapters on Brazilian and U.S. cinema published in Brazil, Spain and the United States. In 1984, he co-authored an award-winning urban research project, Spaces of Dreaming: Cinema and Architecture in Rio de Janeiro. He is currently Visiting Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa.

March 15 (Friday) 4:30pm, Lorch Hall 140 (611 Tappan Street; map: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/media/lorchmap.html)--
Film screening, Cronicamente Inviabel (Chronically Unfeasible) (Dir, Sergio Bianch, Brazil, 101 minutes, 1998; Portuguese with English subtitles). Introduction and discussion with Joao Luiz Vieira (Professor of Film Studies, Universidade Federal Fluminense de Rio de Janeiro). This event is free & open to the public.

Director Sergio Bianchi throws down the gauntlet in an explosive and stridently political docudrama, a critical look at inequality, corruption and hypocrisy in contemporary Brazil. A mosaic of characters, panning all five regions of the enormous country and all classes, interact in pointedly loaded situations, as they struggle to survive, mentally and physically, within their chaotic society.

March 29 (Friday), 11:30am-2:30pm, International Institute, 2609 SSWB
Early Modern Symposium, Technologies of Memory
Introduction: Linda Gregerson (English)
Discussant: Gustavo Verdesio (Romance