Episode 5 – June 14, 2021
Sherwin K. Bryant: The African Diaspora in Latin America: Telling Our Stories
This episode of Dialogues in Afrolatinidad features Dr. Sherwin K. Bryant, an Associate Professor of African American Studies and History at Northwestern University. He specializes in the history of the African Diaspora and questions of slavery, race, law, and legal history in the Andes. In this conversation, he delves into his early formative experiences and how they set the stage for his development in academia and interest in the erasure of slavery in Ecuador. He also explores the geographical marginalization that Afro- descendant communities have experienced across the Americas.
Dr. Sherwin Bryant – Website and Social Media
Episode Resources
Books
Sherwin K. Bryant, Rivers of Gold, Lives of Bondage: Governing through Slavery in Colonial Quito, University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
Sherwin K. Bryant, Rachel O’Toole and Ben Vinson, editors, Expanding the Diaspora: Africans to Spanish America, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.
Lolita Gutiérrez Brockington, Blacks, Indians, and Spaniards in the Eastern Andes: Reclaiming the Forgotten in Colonial Mizque, 1550–1782, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2006.
Lolita Gutiérrez Brockington, The Leverage of Labor: Managing the Cortés Haciendas in Tehuantepec, 1588–1688, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1989.
Juliet Hooker, editor, Black and Indigenous Resistance in the Americas: From Multiculturalism to Racist Backlash, London: Lexington Books, 2020.
Kathryn Joy McKnight and Leo J. Garofalo, editors, Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550-1812, Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2009.
Colin A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570-1650, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.
Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America, New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003, first published in 1976.
Articles
Sherwin K. Bryant, “Finding Freedom in Colonial Quito,” in The Ecuador Reader, Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.
Sherwin K. Bryant, “Finding Gold, Forming Slavery: The Creation of a Classic Slave Society,” The Americas Vol. 63, No. 1, The African Diaspora in the Colonial Andes (Jul., 2006), pp. 81-112.
Ollie A. Johnson, III, “Black Activism in Eduador, 1979-2009,” in Comparative Perspectives on Afro-Latin America, Kwame Dixon and John Burdick, editors, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014, pp. 176-197.
Jean Muteba Rahier, “Afro-Ecuadoran Community Organizing and Political Struggle: Influences on Participation in Constitutional Processes,” in Comparative Perspectives on Afro-Latin America, Kwame Dixon and John Burdick, editors, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014. pp. 198-218.
Carlos de la Torre and Jhon Antón Sánchez, “The Afro-Ecuadorian Social Movement,” in Black Social Movements in Latin America: From Monocultural Mestizaje to Multiculturalism, Jean Muteba Rahier, editor, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 135-150.
Databases
SlaveVoyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database – a massive digital memorial designed to shed new light on one of the most harrowing chapters of human history.
Michele Reid-Vazquez, Ph.D. 