Bryn Mawr’s Africana Studies program and the Tri-Co Caribbean Studies Working Group recently held a full day of public lectures on centuries-long hemispheric histories, cultures, and politics of Caribbean life in the archipelago and its diasporas.
During the afternoon of April 22, the Program in Africana Studies hosted its inaugural Miriam Jiménez Román Memorial Lecture in Afro-Latinx Studies. The speaker for the event was Omaris Z. Zamora, assistant professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Zamora presented on her forthcoming manuscript with NYU Press, Cigüapa Unbound: AfroLatina Feminist Epistemologies of Tranceformation, which examines the transnational Black Dominican narratives put forth in the work of Firelei Baez, Elizabeth Acevedo, Nelly Rosario, Ana Lara, Loida Maritza Pérez, Josefina Baez, Cardi B, and La Bella Chanel. Zamora pays close attention to how they embody their blackness, produce knowledge, and shift the geographies of black feminism in ways that recognize the legacies of Chicana/Latina and Black American feminist theory in the United States, but tends to the specific experiences of AfroLatina women and their multiple genealogies.
Jiménez Román was a pioneering architect of Afro-Latinx studies, an area of activist scholarship centering the histories and lived experiences of U.S. Black Latinx communities, which has become more prominent at Bryn Mawr and the other schools making up the Tri-Co, Haverford, and Swarthmore, in recent years.
Later in the day, the Tri-Co Caribbean Studies Working Group held an event featuring Aleah Ranjitsingh, assistant professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY, and a panel presentation and discussion among Tri-Co faculty about building Caribbean Studies programming at the Tri-Co from conceptualization to implementation.
The intellectual, cultural and political formation of the Tri-Co Caribbean Studies Working Group is convened collectively by Associate Professor of Social Work and Social Research Tamarah Moss and Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Paul Joseph López Oro, who center building the already robust existence of Tri-Co Caribbeanist faculty whose research, teaching, and practice interests lie at the intersections of Caribbean Studies.
In addition to Moss and López Oro, the Tri-Co Caribbean Studies Working Group is comprised of Associate Professor of Philosophy Qrescent Mali Mason of Haverford College, and from Swarthmore College, Assistant Professor of History Elise Mitchell, Assistant Professor of Sociology Edlin Veras, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics Nicte Fuller.
Moss shared that Caribbean Studies contribute to the cultivation of deep understanding and knowledge development of regional and diasporic communities, critical communication and thinking skills, and innovative student-faculty engagement that are hallmarks of the liberal arts academic setting. Faculty, staff, and students interested in Caribbean Studies can contact López Oro via email for information on upcoming events.
The Tri-Co Caribbean Studies Working Group is funded by the Mellon Tri-Co Faculty Forum.