Beatriz Nascimento and the Erotics of the Quilombo in Times of Peril 

Article by Kat Cosby in Social Sciences, 2024, vol. 13(9), issue 492

In October 2018, the election of an extreme right-wing politician as president of Brazil laid bare the histories of antidemocratic practices that guided the policies and rhetoric of the newly elected government. Black, poor, Indigenous, Northeastern, and LGBTQIA+ people were positioned as threats to the stability of the nuclear family and public safety that the government claimed it would protect. The subsequent COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 also put into stark view the antidemocratic practices and the blatant disregard for life in Brazil, which was particularly acute for people who had been marked as a threat. “Beatriz Nascimento and the Erotics of the Quilombo in Times of Peril” revisits the work of Beatriz Nascimento, a Black Brazilian thinker and scholar who lived through the repressive and antidemocratic period of the military dictatorship (1964–1985). Nascimento’s work offers perspective to the current extreme right-wing project and underscores the significance of Black scholars’ interventions when the lives of marginalized people are at stake. Specifically, her concept of the quilombo (maroon communities) uncovers the histories, relations of power, and the possibilities of social relations for Brazilians living in precarity that antidemocratic governments have attempted to diminish and erase.

The interprovincial slave trade from Rio de Janeiro, 1809–1833: An analysis of the Brazilian Institute of Applied Economic Research database

Article by Kat Cosby & Daniel B. Domingues da Silva in History Compass, vol. 18, issue 12

In the 19th century, Rio de Janeiro emerged as the largest slaving port in the Americas. Every year, ships, mainly from Brazil and Portugal, poured thousands of enslaved Africans in that port. But what happened to them after they disembarked? In this paper Kat and Dr. Domingues da Silva examine a database of passports and other sources compiled by the Brazilian Institute of Applied Economic Research to address that question. It also discusses the challenges and methods of adjusting the database to an ongoing project focused on the intracontinental slave trade in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The paper shows that, although Rio de Janeiro was the final destination for many slaves disembarked there, a significant proportion of them was re‐exported into the interprovincial traffic, to regions as distant as Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Rio Grande do Sul.

Perspectives on Women’s History Month: Recent ACLS Fellows Share Work Uncovering History

Conversation with ACLS

In this interview for ACLS, Kat and other fellows talk about how their work centers women, their stories, and how the Mellon/ACLS fellowship allowed them to advance their work.

Archive Interpreters: Black Women in São Paulo, 1912-1930

Interview for the Public Archives of the State of São Paulo (in Portuguese)

A primeira vez que fui ao APESP, estava em meu segundo ano de doutorado, como bolsista do Consórcio de Estudos Negros da Universidade da Califórnia, em 2017. Cheguei aos arquivos sem habilidade para apresentar minhas ideias em língua portuguesa, mas, mesmo assim, os arquivistas fizeram de tudo para me apoiar. Como estrangeira, é ainda mais imprevisível o que você vai encontrar nos documentos de um arquivo. Eu passei algumas semanas lendo os documentos, até que achei os boletins médico-legais que utilizo em minha tese.

Review: The Politics of Blackness: Racial Identity and Political Behavior in Contemporary Brazil, by Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour

In The Politics of Blackness: Racial Identity and Political Behavior in Contemporary Brazil, Gladys Mitchell-Walthour seeks to explain Afro-Brazilian political behavior and political inequality in the cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Salvador. These cities are among the largest in Brazil that have significant Afro-Brazilian populations. Even so, distinctions among them that relate to income inequality, racial composition, and racial politics allow for a dynamic comparison of Afro-Brazilian experiences and how these experiences, in turn, inform political opinions. Mitchell-Walthour centers racial group attachment and experience of racial discrimination to demonstrate variations in political behavior among Afro-Brazilians using the Latin American Political Opinion Project national surveys for 2010 and 2012 (LAPOP) and original survey data that she collected in 2005–6 and 2008. She also relies on in-depth interviews that she conducted in 2012 (32)….

Interview with Douglas Belchior and Dr. Gladys Mitchell-Walthour

Interview

Douglas Belchior, activist, educator and founder of Uneafro speaks with the US Network for Democracy in Brazil’s Co-Coordinator Dr. Gladys Mitchell-Walthour, Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and Kat Cosby, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Irvine.