Professor of Spanish, Portuguese, and History
About
I am a historian of Afro-Latin American lives, thought, and politics as they unfolded in the aftermath of slavery, particularly in Brazil and Argentina. My work explores the intersections of ideas of race and nation in Latin America, with a focus on how Afro-Latin Americans have shaped and contested the region's ideologies of racial inclusiveness in their ongoing struggles for recognition and equality.
My first book, Terms of Inclusion, charts the changing terms through which self-defined Black intellectuals in three major Brazilian cities negotiated the meanings of racial inclusiveness in their multi-racial nation, and the place of people of African descent within it, between 1920 and 1980.
My co-edited volume (with Eduardo Elena, University of Miami), Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina, is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that newly places twentieth- and twenty-first century Argentina in conversation with the literature on race and nation in Latin America more broadly.
My latest book is Black Legend: The Many Lives of Raúl Grigera and the Power of Racial Storytelling in Argentina. Black Legend reconstructs both the life story and the legends surrounding Raúl Grigera, a Black celebrity and icon of the Buenos Aires nightlife in the early 1900s. It examines the role of “racial storytelling” in constructing Whiteness and Blackness in post-independence Argentina and the power of racial stories to shape the fates of individuals, communities, and nations.
I have recently completed (with George Reid Andrews, University of Pittsburgh, and Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, University of Michigan) an edited volume of selected articles from the historical Black presses of Latin America, annotated and translated for English-language audiences. Voices of the Race: Black Newspapers of Latin America (1870-1960) is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in late 2022.
My teaching ranges from introductory surveys on the historical discipline or modern Latin American history to upper-level courses, taught in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, on a range of topics in Latin American history, culture and literature (Brazil’s Black press, Brazil’s multi-ethnic popular culture, literatures of race and nation in Latin America, race and gender in Argentine historical fiction), as well as graduate courses on specialized topics (race and nation in Latin America, Afro-Latin-America, history and narrative, Black celebrity in the South Atlantic).
Recent and Selected Publications
Books
Articles
- (2016) “El Negro Raúl: Lives and Afterlives of an Afro-Argentine Celebrity, 1886 to the Present.” Hispanic American Historical Review 96:4
- (2016) Quando o Rio era black: soul music no Brasil dos anos 70, Revista História, Questões & Debates 62. Special issue: Histórias do tempo presente: pensamento social e raça no Brasil (1945-2000)
- (2012) Of Sentiment, Science, and Myth, Social History
- (2012) Para africano ver:, Afro-Ásia
- (2009) When Rio was Black, Hispanic American Historical Review
- (2008) Para Africano Ver, Luso-Brazilian Review
Book Chapters
- (2016) “Introduction: The Shades of the Nation” (with Eduardo Elena), in Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina (above), 1-22.
- (2016) “Indias blancas, negros febriles: Racial Stories and History-Making in Contemporary Argentine Fiction," in Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina (above), 289-317.
- (2015) Títere roto: Vidas posibles y vidas póstumas del ‘Negro Raúl’ (1886-2011), Cartografías afrolatinoamericanas II. Perspectivas situadas desde Argentina
- (2014) “A Mãe Preta entre sentimento, ciência, e mito: Os intelectuais negros e as metáforas variáveis da inclusão racial no Brasil, 1920-1980.” In Políticas da raça entre experiências e legados da Abolição e da pós-emancipação no Brasil, ed. Flávio dos Santos Gomes and Petrônio J. Domingues São Paulo: Editora Selo Negro, 377-402.
Recent undergraduate courses taught:
Portuguese 474/Spanish 430, Comparative Topics in Spanish and Portuguese: Stories and Histories of Race in Argentina and Brazil
Portuguese 301, Readings in Luso-Brazilian Culture: The Multi-Ethnic Roots of Brazilian Popular Culture: From Margins to Center
Spanish 430: Writing Race and Nation in Modern Latin America
Portuguese 473: The Literature of Race in Brazil: Afro-Brazilian Perspectives on Brazil's Racial Democracy
Research Areas(s)
- Modern Latin American History and Historiography
- Brazil and Argentina
- Ideologies of Race, Nation, and Citizenship
- Intellectual/Cultural History
- Afro-Latin America/Diaspora
Affiliation(s)
Selected award(s)
James Alexander Robertson Memorial Prize, Conference on Latin American History, 2017
Warren Dean Memorial Prize, Conference on Latin American History, 2013
Roberto Reis Book Award, Brazilian Studies Association, 2012
NEH Faculty Fellowship, 2017
ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars, 2017
SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship, 2001
Matthews Underclass Teaching Award, 2017
LSA Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award for Outstanding Teaching of Undergraduates, University of Michigan, 2012
