Speakers

3 (2)International Speakers:

  1. Jaime Arocha (Latin American Anthropology) obtained his PhD in cultural anthropology from Columbia University (1975).Founder Afro-Colombian Studies Group, Center for Social Studies, Colombian National University. Until 2014, Member of the International Scientific Committee, UNESCO’s The Slave Route Program. Columnist on the culture and history of people of African descent, El Espectador. In 1987, Member of the Commission for the Study of Violence in Colombia, whose main publication Colombia, Violencia y Democracia influenced the constitutional reform process of 1991 in reference to the multiculturalism. In 1993, Member of the Special Commission on Black Communities, responsible to draw Law 70 of 1993, which granted black communities collective rights over their ancestral territories, political representation in the Chamber of Representatives and a special Afro-Colombian Studies Program, intended to curb racism. Visiting professor Institute for High Studies in Social Sciences, University of Paris; University of Florida (Gainesville), Department of Anthropology, University of Costa Rica.
  2. Graciela Maglia (Latin American Literature) has a Ph.D in Literature, Paris IV, Sorbonne (France); MA Paul Valéry University (France), MA in Hispanic Literature and Linguistics (Instituto Caro y Cuervo (Colombia); Associate Professor (2004-2013), and Director of the Master of Arts (2006-2013), Pontificia Universidad Javeriana; Visiting Associate Professor at the University of California , Irvine (2012 and 2015-2016); Visiting Associate Professor, Allegheny College, Pennsylvania (2013-2015); Fulbright Scholar in Residence, Massachusetts (2006-2007); Scientific Consultant to Colombian Ministry of Culture for the National Afro-Colombian Year, 2009-2010. She has published more than thirty articles and several books in the field of Caribbean studies, Afro-Creol Studies, Literary Criticism, and Semiotics. Among others: Kondalo pa bibí mejó. Oratura y oralitura de San Basilio de Palenque (Colombia), 2015 (Graciela Maglia a&Yves Moñino): Palenque (Colombia): Oralidad, Identidad  y Resistencia, 2012 (Graciela Maglia & Armin Schwegler eds.).
  3. Yves Moñino (Romance Linguistics). State Doctor of the Paris V Sorbonne University. Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (National Center of Scientific Research), 2003-2012. Ethnolinguist at the “Language, Languages and Cultures of Black Africa”, Laboratory of the National Center for Scientific Research in France, and specialist in languages and civilizations of Central Africa and the two Congos. He has been working since 1993 on the Creole language of San Basilio de Palenque. He published seven books and over fifty articles on these topics. It is one of the top ten world experts in Palenque.
  4. Víctor Simarra Reyes and Bernardino Pérez Miranda (Palenquero Representatives). Víctor has appeared in several documentaries on the Palenquero people of Colombia. He and Bernardino are community leaders and will represent their community and share their story-telling tradition.
  5. André Bueno (Brazilian Ethnomusicology) has a doctorate in Brazilian literature from the University of São Paulo. As an ethnomusicologist, he has studied the Quilombos, or communities descended from slave rebels, in Brazil.   He worked with Yves Monino at LLACAN-CNRS and gives courses at USP since 2010. His two books published transcribe dance-dramas with black characters, recorded in context in three regions in Brazil.

National:

  1. Rhonda Collier (Brazilian Cultural Studies) Dr. Rhonda Collier is an Associate Professor of English at Tuskegee University, where she also serves as the Interim Director of the TU Global Office. She is a Fulbright Scholar, who studied at the Universidad de São Paulo in Brazil.  She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. She also holds a B.S. and a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Georgia Tech respectively. She has published in the areas of Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, African-American, and global hip hop studies. At Tuskegee, she focuses on American literature and composition courses with an emphasis on service-learning. Her work “Mothering Cuba: The Poetics of Afro-Cuban Women” appears in Another Black Like Me: The Construction of Identities and Solidarity in the African Diaspora (Cambridge Scholar Press, 2015). Her upcoming work will focus on Afro-German hip hop. She discusses art as a space of forgiveness and reconciliation. She is passionate about education abroad and cross-cultural student engagement.
  1. Lesley Feracho (Hispanic Literature) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and the Institute of African-American Studies. Dr. Feracho specializes in contemporary Latin American narrative and in particular women’s narrative of the Caribbean, as well as Afro-Latin American narrative and poetry. Her current research involves cross-cultural literary texts (in both narrative and poetry) of women writers of African descent from the Americas (both Spanish-speaking and from Brazil). Dr. Feracho has published work on the poetry of Carolina Maria de Jesus, Miriam Alves and Nancy Morejón in the journals Afro-Hispanic Review and Hispania.
  1. Ludmila Ferrari (Hispanic Cultural Studies) is a researcher and visual artist who is completing her PhD at the University of Michigan. She directs Latin American Visual Studies there and has several pojects, including City Speculations in Detroit. She eeceived the Premio Nacional en Nuevas Prácticas en Artes Visuales from the Colombian Ministerio de Cultura. Her work explores the (im)posible relationships between artistic practices and processes of collective representation using political inquiry. She has completed many projects in Colombia, Argentina, and the United States. Her publications include several articles in academic journals and the book En la grieta: prácticas artísticas en comunidad (in press) published by the prestigious Editorial Javeriana.
  1. Jane Landers (Latin American History) is an historian of Colonial Latin America and the Atlantic World specializing in the history of Africans and their descendants in those worlds. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and Gertrude Conway Endowed Professor of History. She is the author of Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions (Cambridge, Mass., 2010) which was awarded the Rembert Patrick Book Award and honorary mention for the Conference on Latin American History’s 2011 Bolton Johnson Prize for the best English-language book on any aspect of Latin American History. Her first monograph Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2005) was awarded the Frances B. Simkins Prize for Distinguished First Book in Southern History and was a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. Landers co-authored the college textbook, The Atlantic World: A History, 1400-1888 (Harlan Davidson, 2007) and edited Colonial Plantations and Economy in Florida (Gainesville, 2000, 2001) and Against the Odds: Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas (London, 1996). She also co-edited Slaves, Subjects and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque, 2006), and The African American Heritage of Florida (Gainesville, 1995) which won the Rembert Patrick Book Award and a commendation from the American Society for State and Local History. Landers’ 2015 Nathan I. Huggins Lectures “A View from the Other Side: The Saint Domingue Revolution through Spanish Sources,” delivered at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University, will be her next publication. Link to first lecture here.  Link to second lecture here. Link to third lecture here. She has published essays in The American Historical Review, Slavery and Abolition, The New West Indian Guide, The Americas, Colonial Latin American Historical Review, The Journal of African American History and a variety of anthologies and edited volumes.
  1. John M. Lipski (Romance Linguistics) is an American linguist who is most widely known for his work on Spanish and Portuguese dialectology and language variation. His research also focuses on Spanish phonology, the linguistic aspects of bilingualism and code-switching, African influences on Spanish and Portuguese, and pidgin and creole He is currently the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Spanish Linguistics in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the Pennsylvania State University. He previously served as the head of the same department from 2001 to 2005.
  1. William Luis (Latin American Literature) is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt of Spanish at Vanderbilt University.He has held teaching positions at Dartmouth College, Yale University, Washington University in St. Louis, and Binghamton University.Professor Luis was awarded a 2012-2013 Guggenheim Fellowship for his project entitled “The Life and Works of the Cuban Slave Poet Juan Francisco Manzano.” He was also the 2012 keynote speaker at an international conference at the University of Accra, Ghana. Professor Luis has published fourteen books and more than one hundred scholarly articles.His authored books include Literary Bondage: Slavery in Cuban Narrative (1990), Dance Between Two Cultures: Latino Caribbean Literature Written in the United States (1997), Culture and Customs of Cuba (2001), Lunes de Revolución: Literatura y cultura en los primeros años de la Revolución Cubana (2003), Juan Francisco Manzano: Autobiografía del esclavo poeta y otros escritos (2007), and Las vanguardias del Caribe: Cuba, Puerto Rico y la República Dominicana (2010). Luis has also written introductions or forwards to anthologies and books, and some of these are : “Tato Laviera: Mix(ing) t(hro)u(gh) ou(t),” Mixturao by Tato Laviera (Houston: Arte Público Press, 2008), “Exile and Return in Changó, el gran putas.”Changó: The Biggest Badass by Manuel Zapata Olivella, trans. Jonathan Tittler (Lubove: Texas Tech University Press, 2010); and “Latino Identity and the Desiring Machine,” The Other Latino, eds. Blas Falconer and Lorraine M. López, Tucson: Arizona University Press, 2011.Also, Luis is the editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review. Born and raised in New York City, Luis is widely regarded as a leading authority on Latin American, Caribbean, Afro-Hispanic, and Latino U.S. literatures.
  1. John Maddox (Latin American Literature) earned a combined Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese from Vanderbilt University in 2014. He researches Afro-Latin American literature and culture. He has been active with the Afro-Hispanic Review since 2010. He won the 2015 Hispania Scholarly Publication Award. His interviews include Isabel Allende and Ana Maria Gonçalves. Maddox has published articles on contemporary novelists from Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. His publications on Brazil include representations of the eighteenth-century sculptor Aleijadinho, novelist Machado de Assis, and the contemporary Afro-Reggae Movement. His scholarly translation of the abolitionist play La Cuarterona was published in 2016 as Juliet of the Tropics.
  1. Dellita Martin-Ogunsola (Latin American Literature) (Ph.D., The Ohio State University) is Professor Emerita of Spanish in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  She spent her entire career at UAB, where she taught classes in the Spanish language, as well as the cultures and literatures of Peninsular Spain, Latin America, Afro-Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, and the humanities.  In addition, she served as DFLL chairperson for ten years and interim director of the UAB African American Studies program for four. Among Dr. Ogunsola’s publications are significant articles and books on culture, language, literature, and translation:  The Best Short Stories of Quince Duncan/Las mejores historias de Quince Duncan. San José: Editorial Costa Rica,1995; The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Volume 16, The Translations: Federico García Lorca, Nicolás Guillén, and Jacques Roumain, edited and with an Introduction. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003; The Eve/Hagar Paradigm in the Fiction of Quince Duncan. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004; “The Aesthetics of Cultural Transfer in Langston Hughes’s Translations of Works by Federico García Lorca, Nicolás Guillén, and Jacques Roumain,” Foreign Literature Studies 130.2 (Summer 2008): 21-30; “Oralidad y escritura en Malambo,” in “Escribir” la identidad: creación cultural y negritud en el Perú,  edited by M’bare N’gom, Lima, Perú: Universidad Ricardo Palma, December, 2008, 341-58; “The Interplay of Text and Image in Langston Hughes’s Translation Masters of the Dew (1947) and the Haitian Documentary Film The Road to Fondwa (2008),”The Langston Hughes Review 24 (Winter/Fall 2010/2011): 87-102; “Afro-Latin Folktales and Legends,” Fairy Tales with a Black Consciousness: Essays on Adaptations of Familiar Stories, eds. Vivian Yenika-Agbaw, Ruth McKoy Lowery & Laretta Henderson, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., October 15, 2013): 117-144. Presently Dr. Ogunsola serves as an advising and consulting editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review, the CLA Journal and Hispania, as well as a reader for various university presses.  In her retirement Dr. Ogunsola continues to enjoy writing, publishing, lecturing, conference presenting, and mentoring junior scholars and graduate students.
  1. John K. Moore, Jr. (Hispanic Literature) earned a Ph.D. in Romance Languages – Spanish Literature in 2003 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His critical edition of the Libro de los huéspedes (2008) was awarded the MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions Seal of Approval. Moore’s co-edited monographic issue of La corónica entitled The Road to Santiago and Pilgrimage (2008) contains his article “Juxtaposing James the Greater: Interpreting the Interstices of Santiago as Peregrino and Matamoros,” which received an Honorable Mention in the 2007 Frederick W. Conner Prize in the History of Ideas.
  1. Pamela Murray (Latin American History) Since coming to UAB, Pamela S. Murray ( Ph.D., History, Tulane University) has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses  in modern Latin American History, her area of specialty.  These include courses in the history of specific countries such as Peru, Colombia, Cuba, and  Mexico and of  topics ranging from nineteenth century war and politics to the history of women, twentieth century social revolution, and U.S. influence in the region as a whole. Her scholarly research has focused on the history of modern Colombia, most recently on the role of women in the country’s nineteenth century civil wars and partisan politics.  Her publications  include  the “Forward”  in Michael J. LaRosa and German R. Mejia, Colombia: A Concise Contemporary History (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012); “Mujer, Género, y Política en la Joven República Colombiana: Una Mirada desde la Correspondencia Personal del General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, 1859-1862,” Historia Crítica (Bogotá), #37, April 2009; and, the following books: Dreams of Development: Colombia’s National School of Mines and its Engineers, 1887-1970 ( Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997),  For Glory and Bolívar: The Remarkable Life of Manuela Sáenz, 1797-1856 ( Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2008) and Women and Gender in Modern Latin America: Historical Sources and Interpretations (New York: Routledge, 2014). Her first two books also recently have been translated into Spanish. Murray also is an active member of  national and regional  professional organizations and in 2001, served as president of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies.  Since 2008, she also has served as a member of  the Faculty Editorial Board of the University of Alabama Press.
  1. Jordi Olivar (Hispanic Cultural and Literary Studies) Jordi Olivar is an Associate Professor at Auburn University. He earned his PhD in Spanish Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Jordi Olivar’s research covers modern and contemporary Spanish and Catalan literatures and cultures. He is particularly interested in cultural analysis, specifically in issues of modernity, spatial practices, urban studies, and visual culture as they develop and intersect in different cultural contexts. His research has appeared in journals like Decimonónica, Dissidences, and Hispanic Research Journal. His current research projects include the analysis of turn-of-the-century gender discourses on prostitution and human trafficking between Spain and the Americas in the work of Eugenio Antonio Flores, Felipe Trigo, and Eduardo López Bago.
  1. Emanuelle Oliveira-Monte’s (Brazilian Literature and Culture) research interests include Afro-Brazilian literature, race relations, race in comparative perspective, the Afro-Diasporic experience, the relationship between politics and literature, literature of human rights, as well as Brazilian Cinema and Popular Culture. Her manuscript Writing Identity: The Politics of Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Literature (Purdue UP, 2007) examines the intricate connections between literary production and political action by focusing on the politics of the Brazilian black movement and the literature of a São Paulo-based group of Afro-Brazilian writers, the Quilombhoje. She is currently working on a second book manuscript entitled The Color of Crime: Representations of Race and Delinquency In Contemporary Brazilian Literature and Cinema. This study investigates how the diverse representations of Afro-Brazilians in contemporary literature and cinema inform the dichotomy race and violence in Brazilian society. She has also published several articles in professional journals and anthologies. Professor Oliveira-Monte serves the profession through committees in several professional associations, including the Brazilian Studies Association (2004-2008), the Brazilian section of the Latin American Studies Association (currently serving as Treasurer), and the Luso-Brazilian section of the Modern Language Association (2010-present). She is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Afro-Hispanic Review, Chasqui, and Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World. In 2011, she was Guest-Editor (together with Isis Costa McElroy) of a special issue of the Afro-Hispanic Review on the Afro-Brazilian Diaspora.
  1. Carlos Orihuela (Hispanic Literature) (Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh) is a Professor of Spanish in the Department of Foreign Languages at UAB.  He completed his Bachelor and Licenciate in Literature in the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos at Lima-Peru, in 1985; and his Master and Doctorate in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh, in 1993. His area of specialization is Latin American literature with an emphasis in Latin American Contemporary Literature, Indigenous Cultures and Literatures, and Afro-Hispanic Literatures.
  2. Armin Schwegler (Romance Linguistics, Creolistics, Population genetics) My publications include several books and over 60 scholarly articles.  My fieldwork and research have taken me to most (Afro-Hispanic) areas of Latin America, including Cuba. In 2005, I completed a book on the Cuban ritual language of Palo Monte (a religious practice some-what akin to Santería), whose true African roots can now be traced for the first time. I have also been actively engaged in researching Central West-African languages (especially Kikongo), once widely spo-ken in the Americas during the slave trade. My latest book is Fonética y fonología españolas (2010), a completely revised and much expanded version of Schwegler & Kempff (2007, 4th edition).  Volume recently edited by my include Palenque (Colombia): oralidad, identidad y resistencia. Un enfoque inter-disciplinario (2012, co-edited with G. Maglia) and The Iberian Challenge: Creole Languages Beyond the Plantation Setting (2016, co-edited with J. McWhorter and L. Ströbel).
  1. Emily Sahakian (Theater Studies and Francophone Literature) is Assistant Professor of Theatre and French at the University of Georgia. She holds a Dual Ph.D. from Northwestern University and the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales. Her book manuscript, Creolization in Theatre by French Caribbean Women, explores the major works of a generation of pioneering late-twentieth-century female playwrights from the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, and reconstructs their international production and reception histories, in the Caribbean, France, and in English-translation in the United States. Sahakian is the author of half a dozen articles on Francophone Caribbean theatre and a forthcoming book chapter on French stage adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. With Andrew Daily at the University of Memphis, she is preparing a critical edition and translation of Histoire de nègre, a Martinican play created collaboratively under Edouard Glissant’s direction.