Racial Impersonation in Latin America and the Caribbean

Presented by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU. Cosponsored by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, NYU Department of Spanish and Portuguese, NYU Department for American Studies, and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center. 

This conference features investigations of performances of racial parody across Latin America and the Caribbean including blackface, yellowface, redface, passing, and skin-bleaching. The conference asks: what do parodic representations of blackness, indigeneity, Asianness, and racial others tell us about race and racial formation in Latin America and the Caribbean?  What function do they serve in the constitution and dissemination of regional ideologies of mestizaje, mesticagem, non-racialism, and creole nationalism? Conference participants engage studies of the impersonations of blackness, indigeneity, and Asianness across the Hispanophone, Anglophone, Lusophone, and Francophone nations of Latin America and the Caribbean from any discipline. As such, the conference includes studies of racial parody in embodied practice, visual and popular culture including cartoons, art exhibits, festivals, film, theater, and performance art and a vast array of cultural phenomena.

See more details at clacs.as.nyu.edu/page/events.