Lorgia García Peña, Princeton University Professor of African American Studies & Effron Center for the Study of America

TRANSLATING BLACKNESS: Latinx Colonialities in Global Perspective

the annual Luis B. Eyzaguirre Memorial lecture

Tuesday 9/26, 4 pm, Konover Auditorium

Sponsors: Luis. B. Eyzaguirre Memorial Lecture Fund; El Instituto: Institute for Latina/o, Caribbean & Latin American Studies; Spanish (Department of Literatures, Cultures & Languages

El Instituto’s visiting assistant professor, Bethsaida Nieves, will present her research to the University community.

Title: Determining Biological Citizenship: Creating and Effacing Difference in Puerto Rico’s Education

Abstract: My work analyzes the ways in which institutional practices gave legitimacy to conceptualizations of difference in Puerto Rico’s schooling and society. I examine the ways in which discourses of difference provided educators with information about whom the Puerto Rican child was or could become. These epistemological and ontological reference points shifted under the first years of civil colonial rule, which constructed a state of liminal governmentality in Puerto Rico’s education and society. For Puerto Rico’s case, sustained avoidance became a tactic for governing, which has kept Puerto Rico in a state of suspended sovereignty since the turn of the twentieth century.

Bio: Bethsaida Nieves obtained her Ph.D. in Curriculum Theory and Research from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Nieves’ specialty is analyzing the systems of reason(ing) and the intersectionalities that produce knowledge, power, and difference in education and society.

UCHI Fellow Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann (LCL, El Instituto, UConn) will give a talk with a response by Richard Ashby Wilson (Law and Anthropology, UConn.

This event will also be livestreamed.