Please join us on April 8th, 2016 from 9:30am to 5:30pm for the “Conceptualizing Afro-Latin America Across the Disciplines” conference to be held in the Skylight Room at the Graduate Center. Through two student panels, a keynote address by George Reid Andrews (University of Pittsburgh), and a faculty round table featuring Tamara Walker (University of Pennsylvania), Keisha-Khan Perry (Brown University), Juliet Hooker (University of Texas, Austin), and George Reid Andrews, we will grapple with the assumptions that we, as scholars, have brought to the study of the black presence in Latin America.

Although often deployed as a heuristic devise to describe individuals of African descent within Latin America, the term ‘Afro-Latin America’ is indeed one fraught with a variety of implicit assumptions that dictate how scholars across the disciplines have come to study and analyze the black presence within Latin America. Such assumptions include (but are not limited to) a necessary engagement with the African continent in any process of identity, cultural, or social formations; the historical, geopolitical and spatial significance of “Latin America” or any of its constitutive nation-states; and by extension, the preclusion of the rich historical, political, and sociocultural ties within and between individuals of African descent in the (non-Spanish speaking) Caribbean and mainland of what come to constitute “Latin America.” As such, these assumptions undergird a transparent notion of who and where one can or cannot be an “Afro-Latin American.” While these assumptions have generated a plethora of reputable scholarly inquiry, they have also limited and perhaps overdetermined our studies of race, cultural and political identity, community formation, social stratification, and so on among people of African descent within Latin America.

If you have any questions regarding the conference, please contact the conference organizers, Krystle Farman, Keyanah Freeland, Khemani Gibson, and Angela Crumdy, at afrolatamnyc2016@gmail.com.