Princeton researchers present panel on racism in the Caribbean
To present an overview of racism in Cuba and Haiti through a comparative approach is the goal of the panel ‘The Place of Race: Contemporary Caribbean Debates’, to be held on June 27 at the IEA with exhibitions by Rachel Price and Nick Nesbitt, both professors at Princeton University. The encounter will also count with the participations of Omar Ribeiro Thomaz, from Unicamp, as discussant, and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH), as coordinator.
The event was organized by the IEA and RACA (Global Collaborative Network ‘Race and Citizenship in the Americas’) with the support of the Dean of Research (PRP) and the Dean of Culture and University Extension (PRCEU) of USP. The panel is part of the schedule of activities of the strategic partnership agreement signed by USP and Princeton University. The purpose of it is to allow teachers and students to develop collaborative activities of teaching and research with the institutional support of both universities.
The meeting will be broadcast live from IEA's Event Room at www.iea.usp.br/aovivo.
Present
The topic under discussion will be discussed from an interdisciplinary perspective, in order to consider the cultural, historical and political approaches of the issue. According to the members of RACA, this is an important discussion in the Brazilian social agenda, as ‘an activity aimed at understanding this phenomenon in countries with similar experiences - but at the same time profoundly different - can enrich the national debates’.
They underscore the relevance of the proposed debate, since the criticism towards the biological concept of race has not eliminated racism: ‘If today we do not believe in a more naturalized definition of the concept, it is known that a ‘social racism’ is still present in our everyday practices’.
Participants
Rachel Price is an assistant professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures at Princeton University. She specializes in Latin American, and particularly in Cuban and Caribbean literature, culture, and media studies. Her book, ‘The Object of the Atlantic: Concretude 1868-1968’, is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press.
Nick Nesbitt is Professor in the department of French and Italian at Princeton University. He conducts research on the history of the black Atlantic with focus on recovery, narration and critic of discontinuous events, and concepts from the standpoint of eternity (sub specie aeternitatis). He is the author of ‘Caribbean Critique: Antillean Critical Theory from Toussaint to Glissant’ (Liverpool 2013); ‘Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment’ (Virginia 2008); and ‘Voicing Memory: History and Subjectivity in French Caribbean Literature’ (Virginia 2003).
Omar Ribeiro Thomaz is professor in the department of Anthropology and of the Graduate Programs in Social Anthropology and History of Unicamp. He was a researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) for over ten years. His works are focused on the areas of Anthropology of War and Conflict, and African and Caribbean Social History. In recent years, he has been focusing on field research in countries marked by conflict or local rearticulations around the notion of post-war, such as Mozambique and Haiti.
Lilia Moritz Schwarcz is professor in the department of Anthropology at FFLCH. She worked as a researcher at the universities of Leiden (Netherlands), Oxford, Brown, Columbia and Princeton. Her research lies on the intersection between Anthropology and History, with emphasis on the Anthropology of African-Brazilian populations, markers of difference, and the history of the Brazilian empire. Among her main areas of interest there are social identity, slavery, ethnicity and symbolic constructions.
The debate on race and social mobility in the Americas
RACA is a cooperative initiative between Princeton University and USP directed to the involvement of American and Brazilian teachers and students in a series of events held in Princeton and São Paulo from September 2012 to August 2015. It seeks to comprehensively discuss the multiple aspects involved in the racial debate related to social mobility in the American continent.
Due to the multicentered nature of the network, studies promoted by it are eminently comparisons, having as main points of contrast the realities of Brazil, North America and the Caribbean.
The network is coordinated at Princeton by teachers Pedro Meira Monteiro (Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures) and João Biehl (Department of Anthropology), and at USP by teachers Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (Department of Anthropology) and Antonio Sérgio Guimarães (Department of Sociology). Both in the United States and in Brazil, the researchers bring contributions from diverse fields such as Anthropology, Sociology, History, Language and Literature, Political Science, and African-American Studies.
Photos (from the top): Colby Brown, Sergio Delgado, Princeton University, Unicamp and courtesy of Lilila Moritiz Schwarcz