Whiteness in Latin America

 

In the past few years, anti-racist movements and scholars called our attention to how race has played a vital role in shaping modern unequal societies. Diverse organizations and scholars advocated for afro and indigenous communities’ visibility and rights, opening a public discussion about the legacies of racism in Latin American postcolonial societies. 

This event brings together three leading scholars on race studies to discuss an issue usually overlooked in the region: the role of whiteness in Latin American cultures. We want to discuss multiple questions such as: What does it mean to be white in Latin America? Has this meaning changed over time? What role have discourses on whiteness played in Latin American Nation-building? Erika Denise Edwards, Ignacio Aguiló, and Lamonte Aidoo will help us to discuss whitening as a historical and cultural ongoing process.

Speakers 

Erika Denise Edwards is an Associate Professor of Latin American History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the author of Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, the Law, and the Making of a White Argentine Republic.  

Ignacio Aguiló is Lecturer in Latin American cultural studies at the University of Manchester, where he is also co-director of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He is the author of The Darkening Nation (published by University of Wales Press, 2018), co-editor of Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America (ILAS, 2019) and of Chile desde los estudios culturales: Miradas actuales sobre poesía, narrativa y cultura visual (UFT, 2019). 

Lamonte Aidoo is the Kiser Family Associate Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University and Co-Director of the “From Slavery to Freedom: Representations of Race and Freedom in the African Diaspora” humanities laboratory at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute. He is the author of Slavery Unseen: Sex, Power, and Violence in Brazilian History (2018) and editor of Lima Barreto: New Critical Perspectives (2013), Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis )2016) and Lusophone African Short Stories After Independence: Decolonial Destinies (2021)

Host: Patricio Simonetto, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, Institute of the Americas, University College London. The participation of Patricio Simonetto in this event has been funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant number 886496

Images:

[from top to bottom] Redençao de Cam, Modesto Brocos Gómez (1852-1936) | Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro | [Wikimedia Commons]; Erika Denise Edwards, Ignacio Aguiló, Lamonte Aidoo, Patricio Simonetto.