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Paulina Alberto |
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Areas
Modern Latin American History and Historiography; Brazil; Ideologies of Race, Nation, and Citizenship; Intellectual/Cultural History; Afro-Latin America/Diaspora Interests and Current Work My research asks how ideologies of race and nation have shaped citizenship in Latin American societies since independence. I am particularly interested in the ways that competing definitions of race and nation, enunciated by political and intellectual elites as well as by people of color, produced different multi-racial societies and different ideas about the meanings of racial inclusiveness across Latin America. More broadly, I am interested in the ways that ideas of the racialized nation have historically constituted a point of convergence and trans-national discussion for Latin American intellectuals, as well as a point of entry for historical studies of the idea of Latin America itself. I am currently working on a book that charts the changing terms
through which black intellectuals in Brazil defined their multi-racial
nation, and their own citizenship within it, between 1920 and 1980.
The book draws upon on the understudied writings of black intellectuals
themselves-specifically, Brazil's rich imprensa negra or black press.
It explores the various ways that these intellectuals used metaphors
of the racialized nation like "racial fraternity" and
"racial democracy" (generally understood as oppressive
dominant discourses) to argue for their inclusion in the nation,
and for their rights to racial and cultural distinctiveness. This
project has pointed me toward new areas for future research, such
as the circulation of discourses of racial utopia in the Lusophone
world, and the erasure of an African past and downplaying of racial
diversity in 19th and 20th century Argentina. Book manuscript in progress: Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals and the Politics of Belonging in Twentieth-Century Brazil. “When Rio was Black: Soul Music, National Culture, and the Politics of Racial Comparison in 1970s Brazil.” Forthcoming, Hispanic American Historical Review, 89:1 (February 2009). “Para Africano Ver: African-Bahian Exchanges in the Reinvention of Brazil’s Racial Democracy, 1961-63.” Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1 (June 2008). “The Problems of Measuring Race and Ethnicity,” with Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof. LASA Forum, Summer 2007. Recent undergraduate courses taught: Spanish 430: Writing Race and Nation in Modern Latin America Portuguese 473: The Literature of Race in Brazil: Afro-Brazilian Perspectives on Brazil's Racial Democracy |