Trajectories of Empire: Transhispanic Reflections on the African Diaspora

Trajectories of Empire extends from the beginning of the Iberian expansion of the mid-fifteenth century, through colonialism and slavery, and into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in Latin American republics. Its point of departure is the question of empire and its aftermath as reflected in the lives of contemporary Latin Americans of African descent and of their ancestors in the historical processes of Iberian colonial expansion, colonization, and the Atlantic slave trade.

The book's chapters explore what Blackness means in the so-called racial democracies of Brazil and Cuba today. Among the historical narratives and themes it covers are the role of medical science in the objectification and nullification of Black female personhood during slavery in nineteenth-century Brazil; the protocols of portraiture in the colonial period that, in including enslaved individuals, pictorially highlight and freeze their supposed inferiority vis-à-vis their owners; and those aspects of discourse that promote colonial capture and oppression in terms of evangelization and the saving of souls, or simply create the discursive template as early as the fifteenth century, for their continued alienation and marginalization across generations.

Trajectories of Empire's contributions come from the fields of literary criticism, visual culture, history, anthropology, popular culture (rap), and cultural studies. As the product of an interdisciplinary collective, this book will be of interest to scholars in Iberian or Hispanic studies, Africana studies, postcolonial studies, and transatlantic studies, as well as the general public.

Author: Jerome C. Branche
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Published: 07/01/2022
Pages: 310
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.01lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780826504593

About the Author
Fra-Molinero, Baltasar: - Baltasar Fra-Molinero is Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Bates College.Branche, Jerome C.: - Jerome C. Branche is Associate Professor of Latin American and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is author of The Poetics and Politics of Diaspora: Transatlantic Musings and editor of Race, Colonialism, and Social Transformation in Latin America and the Caribbean.