Join us for a discussion on the recent book Transatlantic Bondage: Slavery and Freedom in Spain, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Rico (SUNY Press, 2024) with editor and contributor Dr. Lissette Acosta-Corniel (Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY) alongside Dr. Vanessa K. Valdés and Dr. Jacqueline Jiménez Polanco.
Transatlantic Bondage: Slavery and Freedom in Spain, Santo Domigo, and Puerto Rico is an edited volume of essays by leading scholars between the fields of Caribbean Studies and History. From exploring the earliest slavery laws of the Atlantic to considering the lives of free women of color in eighteenth-century Santo Domingo, Transatlantic Bondage contributes to our understanding of colonial Latin America and the early Americas writ large. The early Caribbean, a geography often subjected to footnote status in traditional notions of early modernity, comes to the forefront as a key space in defining the trajectory of the Spanish colonial project in the Americas.
This panel brings together two contributors and the editor of the volume to discuss the development and future of this field of early Caribbean studies. LAIC PhD candidate Angelina Coronado and PhD students Laura Berríos-Figueroa and Pat Santalices-Torres will moderate the discussion. This event is sponsored by LAIC’s Graduate Student Association (GALAIC), the Department of History, the Institute of Latin American Studies, and the Greater Caribbean Studies Program.
About the speakers
Dr. Lisette Acosta Corniel (Editor & Contributor)
Lissette Acosta Corniel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Race and Ethnic Studies at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, in New York City. Acosta Corniel’s research examines gender-based violence, slavery, and resistance in colonial Santo Domingo during the XVI-XVIII centuries. She is the editor of Transatlantic Bondage: Slavery and Freedom in Spain, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Rico, SUNY Press. She is also a contributor to the New York City Department of Education’s Hidden Voices: Stories of the Global African Diaspora, Vol. 1 and 2.
Dr. Jacqueline Jiménez Polanco
Dr. Jacqueline Jiménez Polanco is a Professor of Sociology in the Social Sciences Department at Bronx Community College, CUNY. Dr. Polanco’s research focuses on politics in the Dominican Republic, Dominican American political empowerment, women’s political representation in Latin America and the Caribbean, gender and sexuality, and LGBTIQA+ communities and asylum claim in the U.S. She is the author of the essay “Transgressing Social, Gender, and Sexual Norms in Colonial Santo Domingo (1716-1719)” in this publication.
Dr. Vanessa K. Valdés
Dr. Vanessa K. Valdés is the editor of the Afro-Latinx Futures Series, the series in which this book was published. She is a scholar of the literature and cultures of the Americas, with a particular focus on the Black experience from geographies ranging from the United States to Puerto Rico to Spain. She is the author of three books, including a biography on Arturo Schomburg, bibliographer and a founding figure of Black History as a discipline in North America. Furthermore, she was co-curator of an exhibition on Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter in the Age of Velázquez (2023), which was presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from March 27 – July 16, 2023.
