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 an Assistant Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Slavery Unseen. Sex, Power, and Violence in Brazilian History and the co-editor of Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis and Lima Barreto: New Critical Perspectives.
Host: Patricio Simonetto, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Institute of the Americas, University College London