Black erasure is a bedrock of systematic racism, and the refusal to see Black lives that matter propels the need to understand the making of race and its legacy.
Erika Denise Edwards, associate professor of history and author of “Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, the Law and the Making of a White Argentine Republic,” contends that Black women — concubines, wives, mothers and daughters — are instrumental in understanding the construction of race in Argentina. She argues that these women strategically escaped the stigma of their blackness by recategorizing their racial identities as “white” She delves into the intimate lives of Black women, tracing the origins of the popular mischaracterization of a “black disappearance” and demonstrating how these women shaped their own destinies.
Edwards is the featured presenter for a virtual conversation at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 8, as part of the University’s Personally Speaking series event. This free virtual event is open to the public. Register to join the conversation.
“Hiding in Plain Sight” won the 2021 Western Association of Women Historians' Barbara "Penny" Kanner Award and the 2020 Association of Black Women Historians’ Letitia Woods-Brown Memorial Book Prize. It was a 2021 finalist for the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery's Harriet Tubman Book Prize and was named one of the best books of Black history in 2020 by the African American Intellectual History Society.
Edwards’ research advocates for a re-learning of Argentina's Black past and the origins of anti-blackness. She has been quoted and/or consulted by The New York Times, National Geographic, the World Bank, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian and La Voz del Interior. She currently serves on the board of directors for Latin Americans Working for Achievement, a nonprofit organization that grants scholarships to Latinx youth from the Charlotte Region.
The University of Alabama Press is offering a 30% discount (excluding shipping) to all Personally Speaking attendees to support a more engaged conversation with the author. Use this link for the discount and mention or enter the code PERSONALLY at checkout. The promotion is through the end of February.
All Personally Speaking published experts series events are hosted by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, with The Dubois Center at UNC Charlotte Center City and J. Murrey Atkins Library. During these community talks, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences faculty engage audiences in conversation about their research findings and describe the personal motivations for writing their books.