Sembe Defends Dissertation
Congratulations to Karina Sembe, who successfully defended her dissertation on March 25! Karina will graduate this May with a PhD in Hispanic Language & Literature.
From Karina’s abstract:
“This dissertation explores the socio-racial image that contributed to Black upward mobility in the 16th-19th centuries. I analyze three case studies from South America whose archival presence spans Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, the U.S., Spain, and Great Britain, drawing on a variety of sources such as correspondence, speeches, court records, legislative documents, and chronicles. This research shows that many Black Atlantic Creoles in the colonial period managed to achieve high, at times unprecedented, degrees of agency or exercise authority in and beyond their communities despite systemic racial inequalities. In doing so, they inevitably engaged in hegemonic power relations and often reproduced racial hierarchies while also complicating the dominant rhetoric of race. I center this ambiguity to illuminate the conditions that enabled Black Atlantic Creoles to network effectively.”