
Join us on Friday, September 16, from 2:30 PM - 4 PM in the Barnett Center for Integrated Arts & Enterprise for a celebration of recent books published by Professors Miguel Valerio (Dept. of Spanish & Portuguese alum, 2017) and Javiera Jaque Hidalgo, as part of the K'acha Willaykuna Dancing with Devils: Latin American Masks Traditions exhibit.
In the first part of this colloquium, Professors Jaque Hidalgo and Valerio will discuss their experience working on their edited volume Indigenous and Black Confraternities in Colonial Latin America: Negotiating Status through Religious Practices (Amsterdam University Press, 2022). In the second part, Prof. Valerio will talk about the sources and methodologies he used in his monograph, Sovereign Joy: Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens, 1539-1640 (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
SPPO Colloquium students may attend virtually.
About the presenters:

Dr. Miguel Valerio is assistant professor of Spanish at Washington University in St. Louis. Prof. Valerio is a scholar of the African diaspora in the Iberian world: Latin America, Spain, Portugal, and beyond. He teaches courses in Afro-colonial culture and contemporary Afro-Latin American literature and culture. His research has focused on black Catholic brotherhoods or confraternities and Afro-creole festive practices in colonial Latin America, especially Mexico and Brazil. His research has appeared in various academic journals, including Slavery and Abolition, Colonial Latin American Review, The Americas, and the Journal of Festive Studies. He is the author of Sovereign Joy: Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens, 1539-1640 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and a co-editor of Indigenous and Black Confraternities in Colonial Latin America: Negotiating Status through Religious Practices (Amsterdam University Press, 2022). He is currently working on his second book project, Afro-Brazilian Sovereign Spaces: The World Black Irmandades Built in Colonial Brazil.

Dr. Javiera Jaque Hidalgo is an assistant professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at Virginia Tech. Her teaching and research incorporate topics such as frontier studies, religious studies, and indigenous migrations in the colonial Latin American period, particularly in the Southern Cone. Her work has appeared in A Contracorriente. Una revista de estudios latinoamericanos, Rocky Mountain Review, Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades / Journal of Gender and Sexuality Studies, among others. She is the co-editor of Indigenous and Black Confraternities in Colonial Latin America: Negotiating Status through Religious Practices (Amsterdam University Press, 2022). Currently she is working on a monograph entitled To Die Indio. Funeral Rituals, Community, and Mobility in the Colonial City, which analyzes the cultural and political implications of death in the colonial city of Santiago de Chile in the seventeenth century.
This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Colloquium and the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS). CLAS' contribution is made possible through Title VI Comprehensive National Resource Center funding from the US Department of Education.
The Dancing with Devils: Latin American Masks Traditions initiative is a collaborative effort between the Kawsay Ukhunchay Andean & Amazonian Indigenous Art & Cultural Artifacts Research Collection, the Center for Latin American Studies, the K'acha Willaykuna Andean & Amazonian Indigenous Arts & Humanities Collaboration under the Global Arts & Humanities Discovery Themes, and the Barnett Center for Integrated Arts & Enterprise.