Art&: Jacob Lawrence and the Afro (Hispanic) Caribbean

Intellectual exchange between thinkers within and beyond the Caribbean archipelago has long informed the modes of resistance in the region. These connections have influenced the works of writers such as Langston Hughes from the United States, Nicolás Guillén from Cuba, Luis Palés Matos from Puerto Rico, and Aimé Césaire from Martinique, among others.

Join us for a conversation between Dr. Vanessa Valdés (City University of New York) and Dr. Nicolás Ramos Flores (Colby College) as they discuss their recent scholarship to situate Jacob Lawrence’s The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture in the Afro (Hispanic) Caribbean context. How does Lawrence’s print series engage with notions of solidarity, the enduring legacy of slavery, and racial constructs in the Caribbean and its diaspora?

Dr. Vanessa Valdés is the interim dean of the Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York. Her latest book, Racialized Visions: Haiti and the Hispanic Caribbean (2020) is an edited collection that re-centers Haiti in the disciplines of Caribbean, and more broadly, Latin American Studies.

Dr. Nicolás Ramos Flores is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Colby College. His forthcoming co-edited volume, Hemispheric Blackness: Bodies, Policies, and the Exigencies of Accountability in the Afro-Américas (2022), explores the resistances of Black lives in the Americas.

Please register for this free public program here.