This book explores the history of African tangible and intangible heritages and its links with the public memory of slavery in Brazil and Angola. The two countries are deeply connected, given how most enslaved Africans, forcibly brought to Brazil during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, were from West Central Africa. Brazil imported the largest number of enslaved Africans during the Atlantic slave trade and was the last country in the western hemisphere to abolish slavery in 1888. Today, other than Nigeria, the largest population of African descent is in Brazil. Yet it was only in the last twenty years that Brazil's African heritage and its slave past have gained greater visibility. Prior to this, Brazil's African heritage and its slave past were completely neglected. This is the first book in English to focus on African heritage and public memory of slavery in Brazil and Angola. This interdisciplinary study examines visual images, dance, music, oral accounts, museum exhibitions, artifacts, monuments, festivals, and others forms of commemoration to illuminate the social and cultural dynamics that over the last twenty years have propelled--or prevented--the visibility of African heritage (and its Atlantic slave trade legacy) in the South Atlantic region. The book makes a very important contribution to the understanding of the place of African heritage and slavery in the official history and public memory of Brazil and Angola, topics that remain understudied. The study's focus on the South Atlantic world, a zone which is sparsely covered in the scholarly corpus on Atlantic history, will further research on other post-slave societies. African Heritage and Memories of Slavery in Brazil and the South Atlantic World is an important book for African studies and Latin American studies. It is especially valuable for African Diaspora studies, African history, Atlantic history, history of Brazil, history of slavery, and Caribbean history.

Note: this is an abridged version of the book with references removed. The complete edition is also available online. This book explores the history of African tangible and intangible heritages and its links with the public memory of slavery in Brazil and Angola. The two countries are deeply connected, given how most enslaved Africans, forcibly brought to Brazil during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, were from West Central Africa. Brazil imported the largest number of enslaved Africans during the Atlantic slave trade and was the last country in the western hemisphere to abolish slavery in 1888. Today, other than Nigeria, the largest population of African descent is in Brazil. Yet it was only in the last twenty years that Brazil's African heritage and its slave past have gained greater visibility. Prior to this, Brazil's African heritage and its slave past were completely neglected. This is the first book in English to focus on African heritage and public memory of slavery in Brazil and Angola. This interdisciplinary study examines visual images, dance, music, oral accounts, museum exhibitions, artifacts, monuments, festivals, and others forms of commemoration to illuminate the social and cultural dynamics that over the last twenty years have propelled--or prevented--the visibility of African heritage (and its Atlantic slave trade legacy) in the South Atlantic region. The book makes a very important contribution to the understanding of the place of African heritage and slavery in the official history and public memory of Brazil and Angola, topics that remain understudied. The study's focus on the South Atlantic world, a zone which is sparsely covered in the scholarly corpus on Atlantic history, will further research on other post-slave societies. African Heritage and Memories of Slavery in Brazil and the South Atlantic World is an important book for African studies and Latin American studies. It is especially valuable for African Diaspora studies, African history, Atlantic history, history of Brazil, history of slavery, and Caribbean history.

This book explores the history of African tangible and intangible heritages and its links with the public memory of slavery in Brazil and Angola. The two countries are deeply connected, given how most enslaved Africans, forcibly brought to Brazil during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, were from West Central Africa. Brazil imported the largest number of enslaved Africans during the Atlantic slave trade and was the last country in the western hemisphere to abolish slavery in 1888. Today, other than Nigeria, the largest population of African descent is in Brazil. Yet it was only in the last twenty years that Brazil's African heritage and its slave past have gained greater visibility. Prior to this, Brazil's African heritage and its slave past were completely neglected. This is the first book in English to focus on African heritage and public memory of slavery in Brazil and Angola. This interdisciplinary study examines visual images, dance, music, oral accounts, museum exhibitions, artifacts, monuments, festivals, and others forms of commemoration to illuminate the social and cultural dynamics that over the last twenty years have propelled--or prevented--the visibility of African heritage (and its Atlantic slave trade legacy) in the South Atlantic region. The book makes a very important contribution to the understanding of the place of African heritage and slavery in the official history and public memory of Brazil and Angola, topics that remain understudied. The study's focus on the South Atlantic world, a zone which is sparsely covered in the scholarly corpus on Atlantic history, will further research on other post-slave societies. African Heritage and Memories of Slavery in Brazil and the South Atlantic World is an important book for African studies and Latin American studies. It is especially valuable for African Diaspora studies, African history, Atlantic history, history of Brazil, history of slavery, and Caribbean history.

Traces and Memories deals with the foundation, mechanisms and scope of slavery-related memorial processes, interrogating how descendants of enslaved populations reconstruct the history of their ancestors when transatlantic slavery is one of the variables of the memorial process. While memory studies mark a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to that of memory, the book seeks to bridge the memorial representations of historical events with the production and knowledge of those events. The book offers a methodological and epistemological reflection on the challenges that are raised by archival limitations in relation to slavery and how they can be overcome. It covers topics such as the historical and memorial legacy/ies of slavery, the memorialization of slavery, the canonization and patrimonialization of the memory of slavery, the places and conditions of the production of knowledge on slavery and its circulation, the heritage of slavery and the (re)construction of (collective) identity. By offering fresh perspectives on how slavery-related sites of memory have been retrospectively (re)framed or (re)shaped, the book probes the constraints which determine the inscription of this contentious memory in the public sphere. The volume will serve as a valuable resource in the area of slavery, memory, and Atlantic studies.

With Brazil’s largest concentration of historic landmarks and famous landscapes, Rio de Janeiro’s passionate heritage debates have helped to define both the city and the country. Taking a critical preservationist stance, Brian Godfrey explores how historic designation and urban rebranding have shaped Rio’s distinctive sense of place. Official heritage programs date from the 1930s, when federal authorities centralized power and promoted nationalism. The city began a heritage-based strategy of urban revitalization and rebranding in the 1980s––the “Cultural Corridor” of historic places downtown. Subsequent rediscovery of the old “Little Africa” district and continuing struggles of favela communities have emphasized narratives of “counter-memory” against racism, social injustice, and governmental neglect. Meanwhile environmental activism has encouraged programs to conserve the historic landscapes of Rio’s famous mountains, forests, beaches, and bays. While historic preservation often presumes to conserve or restore heritage sites according to a preexisting authenticity, Godfrey shows how the past actually becomes a resource for present-day interests. Memory brokers have guided the reinvention of historic places, determining whose past has been preserved. Debates over the “right of remembrance,” he argues, shape place memories and identities in this spectacular if highly unequal megacity, which has much to teach the world about conserving cultural diversity and urban environments.

Museums and Atlantic Slavery explores how slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, and enslaved people are represented through words, visual images, artifacts, and audiovisual materials in museums in Europe and the Americas. Divided into four chapters, the book addresses four recurrent themes: wealth and luxury; victimhood and victimization; resistance and rebellion; and resilience and achievement. Considering the roles of various social actors who have contributed to the introduction of slavery in the museum in the last thirty years, the analysis draws on selected exhibitions, and institutions entirely dedicated to slavery, as well as national, community, plantation, and house museums in the United States, England, France, and Brazil. Engaging with literature from a range of disciplines, including history, anthropology, sociology, art history, tourism and museum studies, Araujo provides an overview of a topic that has not yet been adequately discussed and analysed within the museum studies field. Museums and Atlantic Slavery encourages scholars, students, and museum professionals to critically engage with representations of slavery in museums. The book will help readers to recognize how depictions of human bondage in museums and exhibitions often fail to challenge racism and white supremacy inherited from the period of slavery.

A sweeping narrative history of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas. During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, more than twelve million enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas in cramped, inhumane conditions. Many of them died on the way, and those who survived had to endure further suffering in the violent conditions that met them onshore. Covering more than three hundred years, Humans in Shackles grapples with this history by foregrounding the lived experience of enslaved people in tracing the long, complex history of slavery in the Americas. Based on twenty years of research, this book not only serves as a comprehensive history; it also expands that history by providing a truly transnational account that emphasizes the central role of Brazil in the Atlantic slave trade. Additionally, it is deeply informed by African history and shows how African practices and traditions survived and persisted in the Americas among communities of enslaved people. Drawing on primary sources including travel accounts, pamphlets, newspaper articles, slave narratives, and visual sources such as artworks and artifacts, Araujo illuminates the social, cultural, and religious lives of enslaved people working in plantations and urban areas, building families and cultivating affective ties, congregating and re-creating their cultures, and organizing rebellions. Humans in Shackles puts the lived experiences of enslaved peoples at the center of the story and investigates the heavy impact these atrocities have had on the current wealth disparity of the Americas and rampant anti-Black racism.

Offers a new conceptual framework rooted in mythological analysis to ground the field of Africana cultural memory studies. Black Cultural Mythology retrieves the concept of “mythology” from its Black Arts Movement origins and broadens its scope to illuminate the relationship between legacies of heroic survival, cultural memory, and creative production in the African diaspora. Christel N. Temple comprehensively surveys more than two hundred years of figures, moments, ideas, and canonical works by such visionaries as Maria Stewart, Richard Wright, Colson Whitehead, and Edwidge Danticat to map an expansive yet broadly overlooked intellectual tradition of Black cultural mythology and to provide a new conceptual framework for analyzing this tradition. In so doing, she at once reorients and stabilizes the emergent field of Africana cultural memory studies, while also staging a much broader intervention by challenging scholars across disciplines—from literary and cultural studies, history, sociology, and beyond—to embrace a more organic vocabulary to articulate the vitality of the inheritance of survival. “This book not only offers a new and exciting theoretical concept, it also applies that concept to texts in unique and different ways. With this theoretical lens, we can ‘read’ and ‘see’ texts, memories, and ideas in new ways. The author examines an almost dizzying array of cultural and historical moments, scholars, artists, and activists and provides new lenses through which to read them as well. This is a brilliant and much-needed addition to the academic and cultural conversation.” — Georgene Bess Montgomery, author of The Spirit and the Word: A Theory of Spirituality in Africana Literary Criticism

Exploring notions of history, collective memory, cultural memory, public memory, official memory, and public history, Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past explains how ordinary citizens, social groups, governments and institutions engage with the past of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. It illuminates how and why over the last five decades the debates about slavery have become so relevant in the societies where slavery existed and which participated in the Atlantic slave trade. The book draws on a variety of case studies to investigate its central questions. How have social actors and groups in Europe, Africa and the Americas engaged with the slave past of their societies? Are there are any relations between the demands to rename streets of Liverpool in England and the protests to take down Confederate monuments in the United States? How have black and white social actors and scholars influenced the ways slavery is represented in George Washington's Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in the United States?How do slave cemeteries in Brazil and the United States and the walls of names of Whitney Plantation speak to other initiatives honoring enslaved people in England and South Africa? What shared problems and goals have led to the creation of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC? Why have artists used their works to confront the debates about slavery and its legacies? The important debates addressed in this book resonate in the present day. Arguing that memory of slavery is racialized and gendered, the book shows that more than just attempts to come to terms with the past, debates about slavery are associated with the persistent racial inequalities, racism, and white supremacy which still shape societies where slavery existed. Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past is thus a vital resource for students and scholars of the Atlantic world, the history of slavery and public history.

An authoritative overview of the developing field of public history reflecting theory and practice around the globe This unique reference guides readers through this relatively new field of historical inquiry, exploring the varieties and forms of public history, its relationship with popular history, and the ways in which the field has evolved internationally over the past thirty years. Comprised of thirty-four essays written by a group of leading international scholars and public history practitioners, the work not only introduces readers to the latest scholarly academic research, but also to the practice and pedagogy of public history. It pays equal attention to the emergence of public history as a distinct field of historical inquiry in North America, the importance of popular history and ‘history from below’ in Europe and European colonial-settler states, and forms of historical consciousness in non-Western countries and peoples. It also provides a timely guide to the state of the discipline, and offers an innovative and unprecedented engagement with methodological and theoretical problems associated with public history. Generously illustrated throughout, The Companion to Public History’s chapters are written from a variety of perspectives by contributors from all continents and from a wide variety of backgrounds, disciplines, and experiences. It is an excellent source for getting readers to think about history in the public realm, and how present day concerns shape the ways in which we engage with and represent the past. Cutting-edge companion volume for a developing area of study Comprises 36 essays by leading authorities on all aspects of public history around the world Reflects different national/regional interpretations of public history Offers some essays in teachable forms: an interview, a roundtable discussion, a document analysis, a photo essay. Covers a full range of public history practice, including museums, archives, memorial sites as well as historical fiction, theatre, re-enactment societies and digital gaming Discusses the continuing challenges presented by history within our broad, collective memory, including museum controversies, repatriation issues, ‘textbook’ wars, and commissions for Truth and Reconciliation The Companion is intended for senior undergraduate students and graduate students in the rapidly growing field of public history and will appeal to those teaching public history or who wish to introduce a public history dimension to their courses.