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The Modern Languages Speaker Series at Rhode Island College Presents:

Dr. Fernando Arenas (University of Michigan): "Africans and Afro-descendants in Portugal: Continuity and Ruptures from Late Medieval to Postcolonial Times"

November 8, 2012
2:00-4:00 pm
Modern Languages Lab Lounge

This lecture is part of a larger ongoing study of the cultural production related to sub-Saharan African immigrants and their descendants in contemporary Portugal. In this study, I investigate how this production reflects the changing Portuguese nation, where the boundaries between postcolonial Portugal and its former African colonies, as well as the notions of what constitutes "being African" or "being European," are being redefined. I wish to critically probe ideologies of exceptionalism such as Lusotropicalism, based on the notion of a benign and miscegenating Portuguese colonizer that have shaped the Portuguese empire and overdetermined in paradoxical and contradictory ways postcolonial Portugal. This dynamic is most apparent vis-à-vis the phenomenon of African migration, along with the ensuing emergence and growth of Afro-diasporic populations and identities, where marginalization, discrimination, and lack of citizenship have prevailed. By the same token, I aim at bringing attention to economic shifts in the power relations between Portugal and its former African colonies, especially Angola, with important geopolitical and social consequences for both countries.

Fernando Arenas is Professor of Lusophone Studies at the University of Michigan with a dual appointment in the departments of Afro-American and African Studies and Romance Languages and Literatures. His work centers on cultural expressions such as literature, film, and popular music, which he studies through an interdisciplinary and theoretical prism centering on the dyad of post-colonialism and globalization. He received his Ph.D at the University of California, Berkeley in 1994 and taught for 16 years in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Utopias of Otherness: Nationhood and Subjectivity in Portugal and Brazil (University of Minnesota Press, 2003) and co-editor together with Susan C. Quinlan of Lusosex: Gender and Sexuality in the Portuguese-Speaking World (University of Minnesota Press, 2002). He has been a visiting professor at Universidade Federal Fluminense (Rio de Janeiro) and at Harvard University. In 2005-06 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the completion of the book manuscript, Lusophone Africa: Beyond Independence (University of Minnesota Press, 2011).

This lecture is sponsored by the College Committee on College Lectures and is open to the community. For questions, please contact Dr. Sílvia Oliveira at (401)456-8748 or soliveira@ric.edu