Dyckman Farmhouse: Talking About Race Matters 2025: “Genesis of Blackness in the Americas: Santo Domingo, A Passport to Black Caribbean Culture and Identity” with Dr. Lissette Acosta Corniel

Date: September 23, 2025 Time: 6pm-7pm Cost: FREE!
Join us for our upcoming virtual lecture series featuring Dr. Lissette Acosta Corniel, an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies in the Department of Ethnic and Race Studies at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. She will be presenting “Genesis of Blackness in the Americas: Santo Domingo, A Passport to Black Caribbean Culture and Identity,” a conversation about the first Blacks to arrive in the Caribbean and how Santo Domingo, or La Española, played a key role as the main port of entry for the Transatlantic Slave Trade, leading to one of the largest diasporic Black communities and each with a distinct sense of belonging through adaptation, identity preservation, and identity development. Lissette Acosta Corniel’s work focuses on gender, slavery, and resistance in early colonial Hispaniola and Santo Domingo. She has published several articles and book chapters and is the editor of the book Transatlantic Bondage: Slavery and Freedom in Spain, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Rico (SUNY Press, 2024). She is working on her next book, Bad Women, Contested Freedoms: Feminist Behavior in 16th Century Hispaniola. Acosta Corniel is also interested in digital humanities. She was the research associate of the www.firstblacks.org database and is the co-creator and co-director of the faculty-student research program Black Studies Across the Americas. https://openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu/black-studies-across-the-americas/. Talking About Race Matters is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and made possible by The Cowles Charitable Trust and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Dyckman Farmhouse: [VIRTUAL] Talking About Race Matters 2025: “Living Afro-Latina Lives: An Afrodiasporic Feminist Approach to Understanding Identity Formation and Political Consciousness” with Dr. Yalidy Matos

Date: September 25, 2025
Time: 6pm-7pm
Cost: FREE!

Registration Required? YES! Register HERE!

Location: Virtual via Zoom

Join us for DFM’s Talking About Race Matters virtual lecture series with Dr. Yalidy Matos, Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, as she presents her newest research, Living Afro-Latina Lives: An Afrodiasporic Feminist Approach to Understanding Political Consciousness.

Living Afro-Latina Lives: An Afrodiasporic Feminist Approach to Understanding Political Consciousness explores how Afro-Latinas— whether born in the U.S. or abroad but primarily residing in the United States—identify and construct their identities, and how they engage with broader identity categories. Crucially, the work traces the shift from individual identification to the development of an intersectional Afro-Latina political consciousness. This consciousness isn’t just about how they see themselves—it’s about how they act, what they believe, and how they engage politically. Rooted in Black feminist thought, this intersectional Afro-Latina political consciousness has real consequences for political attitudes and behavior. This works examines how identity becomes action, and how Afro-Latina lives illuminate the power of lived experience in shaping political life.

Yalidy Matos is Associate Professor of political science at Rutgers University – New Brunswick. Her scholarship sits at the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, and politics, immigration, and identity politics. Her book Moral and Immoral Whiteness in Immigration Politics (OUP) was published in 2023. She graduated from Ohio State University in Columbus, OH with a PhD in Political Science in 2015, and Connecticut College in New London, CT with a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Gender and Women’s Studies in 2009.

Talking About Race Matters is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and made possible by The Cowles Charitable Trust and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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