ÌÇÐÄTV

Lunchtime Workshop: Researching ‘Race’ in the French Archives

Wednesday 21 June, 12-1:30pm in Ramphal R1.03

In this lunchtime workshop and discussion, Jessica Pierre-Louis, the Transatlantic Fellow holder, will share her knowledge and experiences of researching the history of racial categorizations in the French archives. This workshop is open to students and staff.

Jessica Pierre-Louis has completed a PhD in Modern History in June 2015; she is now a researcher associate, working on the networks in French Antilles history. Her fields of research concern the social history of Martinique in the 17th and 18th centuries. Her interests include prejudice of colour, racial categorisation system, passing and Free Coloured people.

This talk attempts to draw a comparison between Fernando Pessoa and Mário de Andrade on the way they think the typewriter. In other words, I want to see how they react to what I refer as the new conditions of the hand in the era of the typewriter. To this end, I will review and compare their reflections on this machine in different texts as poems, fictions and letters.

Prof Juan Cristóbal Castro received a PhD in Spanish and Latin American (Hispanic) Literatures from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Among others, he has published two books: Alfabeto del caos: crítica y ficción en Paul Valéry y Jorge Luis Borges (2009), and recently Idiomas espectrales: lenguas imagi narias en la literatura latinoamericana (2016).