“Historical Care” in Black Dominican Studies Research: A Black Feminist Method of Archival Redress and Belonging in Ayiti-Quisqueya

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Roundtable Format

Abstract

Early discussions about the “Americas” often focused on the island of Ayiti—now known as Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Yet, the colonial history that divided this island, and especially the role of Black women in resisting oppression and shaping ideas of belonging, has largely been overlooked in conversations about the making of the Americas.

This session examines how Black women actively contributed to the social and political foundations of the “Americas” on the island of Ayiti during the colonial era. It also introduces “Historical Care” as a research approach within Black Dominican Studies. Drawing from Marisa Fuentes’ work, Historical Care and the (Re)Writing of Sexual Violence in the Colonial Americas, panelists will discuss how Black feminist storytelling can be used to acknowledge historical violence while centering Black women’s agency.

Elizabeth Milagros Alvarez will present her oral history and digital mapping project, which traces how African descendants lost land acquired by their ancestors during the Haitian Unification era (1822–1844). She will also delve into the impact of tourism-driven gentrification in Cabarete, Dominican Republic.

Margarita Rosa, will explore the case of María de Cota, a formerly enslaved Black woman born Santo Domingo to enslaved African parents. After gaining her freedom in Spain, she petitioned in 1575 to return to the Americas, proclaiming that she is a “natural” of the region—a case that reveals how Black individuals in the sixteenth century claimed belonging to the Americas.

Sophia Monegro will discuss her Guerrilla Archiving Initiative in the Dominican Republic, which uses digital exhibitions and careful historical narration to honor the complexities of Black women’s experiences, following the ethical principles of Black feminist historians.

Omaris Zamora will moderate the panel, prompting conversations about what does it mean to “belong” to the Americas, and nurture this land, for Black women in the colonial period.
This interdisciplinary conversation highlights how Black Dominican Studies is applying Black feminist research methods to restore historical narratives from Black Women’s vantage proints, bringing marginalized voices to the forefront of American Studies.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Chair

• Omaris Z Zamora, Rutgers University-New Brunswick

Panelists

• Sophia Monegro, Washington University in St. Louis

• Margarita L Rosa, Baruch College

• Elizabeth Milagros Alvarez, Columbia University in the City of New York

Biographical Information

Sophia Monegro [membership ID: 7016182]
Doctoral Candidate at The University of Texas at Austin
smonegro.sm@utexas.edu

Sophia Monegro is a literary scholar working at the intersection of Black Women’s Intellectual History, Atlantic Studies, and Dominican Studies. She is a doctoral candidate in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Monegro was a Fulbright Student Researcher in the Dominican Republic and a Mellon Mays Fellow. Monegro’s dissertation reads the subtexts of archival documents to trace Black women’s intellectual contributions to Caribbean radicalism from Spanish colonial slavery in Santo Domingo to the Dominican Republic and Haiti in the 19th century. Working with African American descendant communities on the island and in the diaspora, Monegro’s archival preservation work and research practices are grounded in the community-based and material needs of Black Dominicans.

Elizabeth Milagros Alvarez
Doctoral Candidate at Columbia University, Department of Geography

Elizabeth Alvarez is the geographer and interdisciplinary urban planning PhD candidate at Columbia University, and her work centers digital mapping projects in the Caribbean.

Margarita Rosa, Ph. D, Baruch College, Department of Black and Latino Studies
dr.margaritarosa@gmail.com

Lecturer in Black and Latino Studies, Baruch College, City University of New York
Dr. Margarita Lila Rosa is a Harlem-based public scholar specializing in Afro-Latin American and Black ​Atlantic history and modern and contemporary art. She received her Ph. D from Princeton University and did her post doctorate at Stanford University. Dr. Rosa’s historical academic scholarship has been published in The Journal of African American History, Slavery & Abolition, and The Black Scholar, among others. She was the winner of the 2024 Letitia Woods Article of the Year Award by the Association of Black Women Historians. She is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Black and Latino Studies at ​Baruch College, at the City University of New York.


Moderator: Omaris Zamora, Ph. D, Assistant Professor, Rutgers University, Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
oz32@lcs.rutgers.edu

Omaris Z. Zamora is a transnational Black Dominican Studies scholar and spoken-word poet. Her research interests include: theorizing AfroLatinidad in the context of race, gender, sexuality through Afro-diasporic approaches. Her current book project tentatively titled, Cigüapa Unbound: AfroLatina Feminist Epistemologies of Tranceformation 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. The manuscript proposes “tranceformation” as a continuous process that engages with the spiritual aspect of self-making and centers the body as an archive that creates and transmits an AfroLatina feminist epistemological theory.