Autumn Barrett, Ph.D. Candidate

History, Identity and the Idea of Race: Rio de Janeiro, RJ and Richmond, VA

My dissertation research focuses on legitimization of social inequity and struggles for social justice surrounding representations of African enslavement and resistance in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Richmond, Virginia in the U.S. as part of a comparative analysis between Brazil and the United States. The comparison explores various interpretations of the past that are foregrounded and/ or silenced within multiple contexts and how these interpretations are meaningful to people at the levels of family or personal history, state history and national history. My point of entry for this analysis centers on community action and discussions surrounding two historic cemeteries where the remains of enslaved Africans were interred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Upon each site a revolutionary figure is memorialized ? Zumbi in Rio de Janeiro and Gabriel in Virginia. How and where do ideologies justifying social hierarchy articulate with national ideals of democracy and equality? How are historic sites and figures representing the history of slavery and resistance made meaningful to people in terms of personal, local and national histories? How are people taught to see themselves in relationship to a past and what pasts are made relevant to whom and for whom?