2021 ATO Quayson Annual Lecture

I am pleased to write to you today to share notice of CDTS’ upcoming Ato Quayson Annual Lecture: Against Death: Black Latina Rebellion in Diasporic Community.

This lecture will be hosted by Dr. Lorgia Garcia Peña
Roy G. Clouse Associate Professor
Department of Romance and Literatures
Committee on Degrees in History and Literature
Harvard University

"Based on seven years of qualitative research in Italy, New York, and the Dominican Republic working with Black Dominican women-led organizations, this presentation engages the intersections of politics, violence, class, race, and migration as they impact Dominicanas’ everyday lives. My research centers the activist and political work of migrant Dominicanas in Italy from the early 1980s to the present in dialogue with the history of Black women’s activism in the transitional years of the post-Trujillo dictatorship in Santo Domingo (1963–1980), particularly through involvement in La UASD and contemporary Dominicanyork cultural productions. The revolutionary anticolonial work of brave Dominicanas from the 1960s to the 80s has not been studied within the context of Black politics and Black freedom. This omission is in part due to the fact that until the late 1990s, the language of liberation among Dominicanas was articulated through class and anti-dictatorship struggles rather than through blackness. Yet, not only did these women understand themselves as Black and part of the African diaspora, as Milagros Ricourt argues, but, as many of the women who shared their stories with me explained, they looked to Black freedom fighters in the United States and elsewhere to shape their political frameworks and aesthetic choices. My intervention translates their struggles to the larger context of global blackness."

The event will be held on Zoom Friday, April 9, 2021, from 12:00pm – 1:30pm.