'The Making of Blackness' Fall Seminars
The Making of Blackness Fall Seminars, organized and convened by Rubén Bracero Salvat, Erica Feild-Marchello, Jehbreal Jackson, and Andrea Rueda Herrera, is a four-part seminar series that brings together researchers from Spain, the US, and the UK. The sessions explore questions of historiographical and methodological interest for research on race and Blackness. They also provide opportunities to share and receive feedback on new projects. Grounded in an interest in early modern Iberia, this series incorporates research on other relevant periods and geographical contexts, especially the Maghrib, the Sahel, and West Africa.
The first meeting will return to questions that arose consistently in the seminar series Reading Race, Images, and Archives I & II (winter and spring 2024). We will dedicate special attention to the problems posed by racialized terminologies and begin developing an in-house document that guides us in thinking through our own terminological choices. The second seminar will take the shape of a reading group and will feature three pieces that offer different perspectives on scholarly debates about research on race in premodern worlds: Sarah Derbew, Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2022), 1-25; Bruce Hall, A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600-1960 (Cambridge UP, 2011); Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge UP, 2018), 15-27. The third seminar invites Guillermo Pupo Pernet (University of Arkansas) to present his chapter, “Black Matter: Assegai in Provincia de Venezuela,” which forms part of his doctoral dissertation. Finally, the fourth session will feature a screening of the progress of Miguel Ángel Rosales’ next documentary project, He venido a llevarte a casa, about the case of "el negro de Banyoles", accompanied by a presentation on the research work associated with the project.
Attendance requires access links, but is open to new participants who can request information and links from the organizers by writing to makingofblackness@gmail.com.
This activity is a result of the project I+D+i PID2021-124893NA-I00: The Making of Blackness, A Process of Cultural and Social Negotiation from the Bottom-Up, funded by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033.