Trajectories of Empire

Jerome C. Branche is Associate Professor of Latin American and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is author of The Poetics and Politics of Diaspora: Transatlantic Musings and editor of Race, Colonialism, and Social Transformation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Baltasar Fra-Molinero is Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Bates College.

"The scholarship demonstrated in this book is highly impressive. This is the case (without exception) of all the essays collected in the volume. . . . Both individually and together, then, these essays constitute a comprehensive analytical coverage of relevant scholarship on the Afro-Iberian diaspora."—Conrad James, author of Filial Crisis and Erotic Politics in Black Cuban Literature: Daughters, Sons and Lovers

• Introduction, Jerome BranchePart 1. The Iberian ScenarioChapter 1. "Tracing the 'Fragmentary Facts' of a Foundational Slave Voyage," Elizabeth WrightChapter 2. "'Christianos nigros:' Afro-Iberian Confraternities' Social and Cultural Roles," Miguel ValerioChapter 3. "In Search of the Black Swordsman: Race and Martial Arts Discourse in Early Modern Iberia," Miguel OlmedoChapter 4. "On Enslaving and Impalement: The 'Life' and Death of Chicaba, Enslaved Black Woman in Empire," Jerome BranchePart 2. Continuing Expansionism and the Circum-AtlanticChapter 5. "Facing the Enslaved: Explorations for a Transatlantic Archive," Agnes Lugo-OrtizChapter 6. "A Postcard from Wakanda to the King of Spain: The Portrait of the 'Mulatos de Esmeraldas,'" Baltasar Fra-MolineroChapter 7. "A Transhistorical and Translocal View of the Luso-Brazilian Imperial/Colonial World through the Poetry of GregÓrio de Matos (1633-1696) to Domingos Caldas Barbosa (1740-1800)," Lucia Helena CostiganChapter 8. "Specters of the Womb: Enslaved Women, Childbirth and Pain in Nineteenth-Century Brazil," Cassia RothPart 3. Afro-Latin America: Black Marginality in the New CenturyChapter 9. "Dynamics and Racial Tensions in Twenty-First Century Post-Revolutionary Cuba," Alberto AbreuChapter 10. "Senzalas e Quilombos Modernos: Evoking the Legacy of Slavery in Brazilian Hip-hop," Eliseo JacobChapter 11. "Their Bones Are Beneath Us: Tourism, Modernization, and Memory in the Gamboa Neighborhood, Rio de Janeiro," Maria Andrea de Santos Soares