The Africana Studies Department, the Department of History and the Latin American Studies program will co-host the international conference “Locating and Connecting Latin America and the African Diaspora” on Thursday and Friday, April 30-May 1. The conference is free and open to the public; all activities will take place in the UNC Charlotte Student Union
Conferees will explore comparative approaches that place North America and Africa in conversation with the Caribbean and Latin America on some of the pertinent transnational issues dealing with globalization and geographies of inequality; race and racism; community formation and citizenship; migration and cross-border movements; and the construction and performance of identity, arts and culture.
According to Akin Ogundiran, chair of the Africana Studies Department, the conference will open up new frameworks for understanding global black identity and generate new knowledge that is relevant to policy issues.
More than 70 participants from 31 universities and colleges will attend the conference, including Reid Andrews from the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh and Alejandro de la Fuente, director of Harvard University’s Afro-Latin American Institute, who will deliver keynote addresses. The two-day conference also will feature workshops, roundtables and the premiere of the documentary "Hip-hop in Argentina and the African Diaspora."
This event is a collaboration of the 13th annual Africana Studies Symposium, organized by the Department of Africana Studies; the 2015 William Wilson Brown Jr. Conference, organized by the Program in Latin American Studies; and the sixth Río de la Plata Workshop, organized by the Department of History and the Graduate History Association. The Chancellor’s Diversity Challenge Fund and the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences also provided support.
For more information, email Oscar de la Torre (odelator@uncc.edu) or Erika Edwards (eedwar27@uncc.edu).