The UCSB AfroLatinidades Institute is a multifaceted component of the Global Latinidades Center that participates in the recovery and analysis of the African roots of Latinx history, culture, and identity. The Global Latinidades Center has assembled a team of researchers, educators, students, and community people in pursuit of a broad-based vision to further globalize the field of Latinx Studies, which necessarily involves a recentering of African lineages as part of this initiative. The AfroLatinidades Institute is thus central to the Global Latinidades Center.
The UCSB AfroLatinidades Institute will be inaugurating new research and programming initiatives throughout ensuing years. These include the creation of new undergraduate and graduate courses, and also a new research cluster of faculty and student researchers open to UCSB, UC, and non-UC scholars. We currently are pursuing additional external funding for postdoctoral fellowships in AfroLatinx literary and cultural studies. For information about the AfroLatinidades Research Cluster, see Research on this website. (For more information about the ongoing and planned activities of the UCSB AfroLatinidades Institute, please see the institute website at: https://afrolatinidades.wordpress.com.)
Significantly, all AfroLatinidades Institute activities will continue to anchor the Global Latinidades Center as a central nodal point in a restructured locus of enunciation that triangulates Africa at the intersection of the contact between Europe and the Americas. Indeed, many of the travelers accompanying 16th century Europeans in the Americas were African. Moreover, mestizaje—perhaps one of the most foundational paradigms in Latinx Studies—was always already Black and also Asian, that is, tricontinental. And this makes all the difference on how we understand the history of race in the Americas for Latinx people, and everyone. We welcome you to join us on this journey of recoveries, reassessments, and redeployments of AfroLatinx history, culture, and identity. There is a lot of research to conduct, knowledge to produce and share, and actions to take pursuant to a more equitable and just world. We are guided by a great historian who once noted, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
For more information about the ongoing and planned activities of the UCSB AfroLatinidades Institute, please see the institute website at: https://afrolatinidades.wordpress.com.)