Williams College to Host Afro-Latinidades Symposium

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., October 31, 2016—On Saturday, Nov. 5, the Williams College Latino/a Studies Department will host a symposium on “Afro-Latinidades in the United States.” The event will run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with sessions and lectures by a variety of scholars in the field. All sessions will take place in Thompson Chemistry, Wege Auditorium.

The event will begin at 8 a.m. with a light breakfast in Eco Café, followed by a welcome meeting at 9 a.m.

Session I will run from 9:30 – 11 a.m. with talks by Jennifer Jones, presenting “From Nuyoricans to Afro-Mestizos: Making the Invisible Visible and the Importance of Afro-Latino Diasporas” and Sebastián Pérez, presenting “Aesthetics of the Get Down: New York Rican Photography at the Origins of Hip Hop.”

Session II will run from 11:15 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., with talks by Omaris Z. Zamora, “Alright Ladies Now Let’s Get In (Trance)Formation: The Performativity & Production of AfroLatina Feminist Knowledge in Josefina Baez’s Levente No. Yolayorkdominicanyork, La Bella Chanel and Cardi B” and Petra Rivera-Rideau, “Introducing Enrique Iglesias, artista urbano”: (Re)Constructing (Afro)Latinidad in Latin Urban Music.”

There will be a lunch break from 12:45 – 2:15 p.m.

From 2:15 – 3:30 p.m. there will be a dialogue with Carlos Alamo-Pastrana and Ginetta Candelario on “Past, Present, and Future of Afro-Latina/o Studies.

The day will conclude with a Nelly Rosario, who will read from “Of RGB, DNA, and Other Codes: A Mixed Genre Reading.”

Jennifer Jones is an assistant professor in the department of sociology and a faculty fellow in the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Jones completed a postdoctoral fellowship at The Ohio State University in sociology as a social and behavioral sciences diversity fellow, and received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Specializing in race and ethnicity, immigration, political sociology, and Latin America and the Caribbean, Jones’ recent work can be found in such journals as Sociology of Race and EthnicityEthnic and Racial Studies, and Latino Studies. Jones is currently writing a book titled Majority Minority: Race, Immigration and the Browning of the New South.

Sebastián Pérez is a graduate student at Yale University. Hailing from the Bronx, he is interested in questions of coloniality and the Puerto Rican diaspora, particularly the aesthetic traditions and political legacies of the Nuyorican Arts Movement(s). His interests include Latino/a literatures and visual culture, (post/de)colonialism, Caribbean studies, and cultural studies. He received his B.A. from Yale in 2010.

Omaris Z. Zamora is a visiting assistant professor in the Africana studies program at Lehigh University. Her research and teaching interests include the 20th – 21st century Hispanic Caribbean; race, gender, and sexuality; critical race theory, Hispanic Caribbean transnational migration, and Dominican studies. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in the summer of 2016.

Petra Rivera-Rideau is an assistant professor of American studies at Wellesley College who studies race and ethnic identities and popular culture in Latin America and U.S. Latina/o communities. She is the author of Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico, and co-author of Afro-Latin@s in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas. She holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Carlos Alamo-Pastrana is associate dean of strategic planning and academic resources, and associate professor of sociology and Latin American and Latina/o Studies at Vassar College. His interests focus on comparative racial formations, Afro-Latina/o intellectual history, popular culture, and prison studies. He is the author of The Seams of Empire: Connective Histories of Race and Racialism in Puerto Rico and the United States, forthcoming. He received his Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara.

Ginetta Candelario is associate professor of sociology and Latin American and Latina/o Studies at Smith College. Candelario’s research interests include Dominican history and society, with a focus on national identity formation and women’s history; Blackness in the Americas; Latin American, Caribbean and Latina feminisms; Latina/o communities (particularly Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican); U.S. beauty culture; and museum studies. She has been a Fulbright Scholar in the Dominican Republic twice, in 2003 and 2016. Her book, Black behind the ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops, received the 2009 Best Book Award from the Latino Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association. She received her A.B. from Smith, and her Ph.D. from the City University of New York.

Nelly Rosario is a Dominican American novelist. She received a B.A. in engineering from MIT and went on to receive an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University. She was named a “Writer on the Verge: by the Village Voice Literary Supplement in 2001. Her book, Song of the Water Saints, won the 2002 PEN Open Book Award.

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For building locations on the Williams campus, please consult the map outside the driveway entrance to the Security Office located in Hopkins Hall on Main Street (Rte. 2), next to the Thompson Memorial Chapel, or call the Office of Communications (413) 597-4277. The map can also be found on the web at www.williams.edu/map

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Published October 31, 2016