What I Am Thinking About Now: Professor Geri Augusto (Africana Studies)

Quilombola is the adjective applied to Afro-descendant maroon communities (rural and urban) and a range of alternative institutions and ideas concerned with racism and inequality in contemporary Brazil. As a 2013-14 Fulbright Scholar in Brazil, Prof. Geri Augusto recently completed a semester of research, teaching and public activities (including her  ongoing project entitled Sentient Quilombos, on use of new media by quilombola fishing communities and other institutions in Bahia state, which has the largest black population of all states in a country where the majority now considers itself to be Afro-descendant.)  Using four artifacts related to her recent work as conversational touchstones, Prof. Augusto will present a few ideas, dilemmas and practices at the intersection of  quilombos, racial equality, hierarchies of difference, environmental justice, and culture- as- resistance, with the aim of sparking an open conversation on connections and divergences in these matters in Brazil, the USA and elsewhere.

What I Am Thinking About Now is an on-going informal workshop/seminar series to which faculty and graduate students are invited to present and discuss recently published work and work in progress.