Reflections from Afro-Diasporic Feminisms Part III: Black Feminist Theoretical Languages in Afro-Latin(x) America and the Caribbean

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Several panels invite an in-depth Pan-American look at “Nuestra América/Our America” from the perspective of Black women. What does Pan-Americanism with the contributions of Black women to Latin America(n Studies)? Looking from 1600s towards 2041, 150 years after José Martí’s essay portrayed a black Latin American as "unknown and alone, singing in the dark of night, on top of a hill"… and yet another century of Black women triply-marginalized, yet ferociously alive, thriving, and beautiful, the multiple panels expand Pan Americanism with the heterogenous Black women's perspectives of justice and inclusion.
Massachussetts, where Black women such as Maria Stewart and Latinxs from labor unions advocated for emancipation and people of colors’ rights; where Maryse Condé's fictional character Tituba lived before her return to Barbados as a maroon rebel… makes an apt location to discuss justice and inclusion and the presence of Black women in Latin America(n Studies) and activism. Long after slavery was “abolished,” with Black women’s emancipation being long overdue, let us bring to the forefront the guerreras that have laid the base for collective and individual rights, from slaveships, to Haiti, to Santiago de Cuba, to Minas Gerais, to Cali, to Massachussets...
This is one of several multilingual panels representing the multilayered contributions of Black women; here the focus is on Black and Decolonial Feminisms by Afro-Latinx and Afro-Latin American women, including interethnic activism and creative challenges to work against racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and/or capitalism.

Sub Track

• Afro-Latin/Indigenous Peoples

Session Organizer

• Sarah Soanirina Ohmer, Lehman College, City University of New York (CUNY)

Chair

• Sarah Soanirina Ohmer, Lehman College, City University of New York (CUNY)

Discussant

• Angelica M Sanchez Barona, Harvard University

Individual Presentations

• “Theory in the Flesh:” Situating Afro-Latinx Feminisms within a Black Queer Atlantic Feminist Discourse - Aurelis Troncoso, PhD student, American Culture, University of Michigan

• Creative Cartographies of a Black Sociopolitical Movement: Navigating Afro-Colombian Feminist Liberation and Revolution through film, Hip-Hop and Poetry, Law 70 and Beyond - Lana E Sims, University of Pittsburgh

• «Atlántico Negro»: Relatos de sexualidad racializada de la diáspora Dominicana Madrileña - Jeannette Tineo Durán, Independent Scholar