Herman L. Bennett

Department of History Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey 16 Seminary Place New Brunswick, NJ 08901-5059 Tel: (732) 932-1065 Fax: (732) 932-6763 Email: [email protected]

Education 1993 Ph. D. Latin American History, Duke University; Graduate Certificate in Latin American Studies. Academic Fields: Latin American History (emphasis on the colonial period) African Diaspora (emphasis on colonial ethnicity) Pre-colonial Africa Cultural Anthropology

1988 M. A. Latin American History, Duke University. 1986 B. A. History and Afro-American Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Phi Beta Kappa and Highest Honors in History

Employment 2003-present Associate Professor, Department of History, Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey 1997-2003 Assistant Professor, Department of History, Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey Spring 2000 Visiting Professor at the Fakultät für Geschictswissenschaft und Philosophie, Universität Bielefeld 1995-1997 Assistant Professor, Department of History, The Johns Hopkins University 1992-1993 Instructor, Department of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Publications Books: Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570-1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003; paperback edition 2004). Articles: “Re-situating Slave Politics” in Afro-Mexico, Ben Vinson, III and Matthew Restall, eds. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, forthcoming) “Sons of Adam: Text, Context and the Early Modern African Subject” Representations (Fall 2005): 1-45. “Genealogies to a Past: Africa, Ethnicity, and Marriage in Seventeenth-Century Mexico,” in New Studies in American Slavery, Edward E. Baptist and Stephanie M. H. Camp, eds. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005)

1 “The Subject in the Plot: National Boundaries and the ‘History’ of the Black Atlantic,” African Studies Review (April 2000): 101-124. “A Research Note: Race, Slavery, and the Ambiguity of Corporate Consciousness,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review (Spring 1994) 207-213. “The Challenge to the Post-Colonial State: A Case Study of the February Revolution in Trinidad,” in The Modern Caribbean, Franklin W. Knight and Colin A. Palmer, eds. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 129-146. (Reprinted in Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present, Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd, eds. (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1993). Books in Progress: “Strategic Conjugality: Afro-Christian Narratives and the Culture of Liberty in Absolutist New Spain” (under contract: Bloomington: Indiana University Press). “Africans into Slaves: Sovereigns, Polities, and Subjects in the Making of the Atlantic World” Articles in Progress: “Writing into a Void: Slavery, History and Representing Blackness in Latin America” (under consideration) Fellowships

2006-2007 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer 2002 Rockefeller Foundation Faculty Research Grant 2000-2001 Faculty Fellow, Utopias and Violence, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey 1997-1999 Faculty Fellow, The Black Atlantic, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey 1993-1995 Mellon Postdoctoral Scholar, The Johns Hopkins University Fall 1993 USIA Travel and Research Grant for Argentina Summer 1993 IRSS Faculty Research Grant; Brandes Course Development Award 1991-1992 Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities 1990-1991 Shell International Studies Dissertation Award Spring 1990 Aleane Webb Research Fellowship 1989-1990 Duke Endowment Fellowship Summer 1988 Tinker Foundation Fellowshop 1986-1988 Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities Summer 1984 National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholar Award

Invited Lectures

“Sons of Adam: Text, Context and the Early Modern African Subject,” (Delivered to the Redress Working Group, Department of English, UC Berkeley, October 2005) “Writing into a Void: Slavery, History and Representing Blackness in Latin America,” (Delivered to Department of History, New York University, October 2004) “Narratives and Nation: Black Histories and the Mexican Nation,” (Delivered to International Week, “Mexico and the U.S.: Sin Fronteras, Without Borders,” Albion College, February 2002) “Mapping the Colonial Archive: The African, the Slave and Christian Colonialism in the Early Modern Iberian Atlantic World,” (Delivered to the Lateinamerika-Institut, Freie

2 Universität Berlin, January 2000; and to the Kolloguium für Iberische und Lateinamerikanische Geschichte und die Fakultät für Geschictswissenschaft und Philosophie, Universität Bielefeld, January 2000) “Christian Colonialism and the Formation of the Early Modern ‘Black’ Subject,” (Sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies and Afro-American Studies, Brown University, October 1998) “Slaves and Subjects: Towards an Early Modern ‘Black’ Intellectual History (Delivered to the Institute for the Research in African American Studies, Columbia University, September 1998) “Christian Colonialism and the Formation of the Early Modern ‘Black’ Subject: The Atlantic World to 1600” Delivered to the African-American Studies Program, Princeton University, February 1998) “Mapping the Elusive: Christian Colonialism and the Construction of the ‘Black’ Subject in the Early Modern Atlantic” (Delivered to the Latin American Cultures Program and the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture, University of Pennsylvania, December 1996) “Mapping the Elusive: Race & the Construction of the ‘Black’ Subject in the Early Modern Atlantic” (Delivered to the Curriculum in African and Afro-American Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, November 1996) “Slavery, Freedom and the Paradox of Race in Early Modern Latin America” (Delivered to the Program in the Humanities and Human Values, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, November 1996) “‘I am married…in accordance with the Holy Mother Church’s Dictates:’ Spouse Selection and the Construction of Angolan Ethnicity in Seventeenth-Century New Spain” (Delivered to the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, Yale University, November 1996) “Who Speaks for the ‘African’ Past?: Representational Poetics in the African Diaspora (Delivered at The Johns Hopkins University’s: “Debating Afrocentricism in the Academy” Conference, November 1996 “Blackmoors, Sovereignless Bodies, and Christian Colonialism: The Formation of the African in the Early Modern Atlantic (Delivered at the University of Maryland’s: “Dialogues Across the Americas” Conference, November 1996) “Mapping the Elusive: Race and Construction of the ‘Black’ Subject in New Spain” (Delivered to the History Department, University of Delaware, April 1996; History Department, Clarion University, April 1996) “Identity, Race and Invisibility in Colonial Mexico” (Appalachian State University, February 1993) “The Slave Trade, Slavery and Its Legacies” (aired on National Public Radio’s Soundings, February 1993) “The African Experience in Latin America” (public lecture for the televised course entitled: Slavery in the Americas, University of Virginia, February 1993) “New Perspectives on Comparative Slavery in the Americas,” (Barbados Community College, November 1992) “The Creation of the Afro-Atlantic World: A Latin American Perspective” (University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Kingston, Jamaica, November 1992) “The Construction of Afro-Mexico, 1595-1810” (Delivered at the University of the West Indies,

3 Cave Hill, Barbados, November 1992; University of Guyana, October 1992; University of Utah, April 1992) “Columbus and the Formation of the Afro-Atlantic World” (Delivered as part of the Collum Lecture Series, Augusta College, Georgia, March 1992) “The Civil Rights Movement in Perspective,” (Durham Academy, Durham, NC February 1986)

Papers & Panel Presentations

“Genealogies to a Past: Africa, Ethnicity, and Marriage in Seventeenth-Century Mexico” (Presented at “Between Race & Place: Blacks and Blackness in Central America & the Mainland Caribbean, Tulane University, November 2004) Presenter, “Race and Classification: The Case of Mexican America (Conference sponsored by the Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, April 2004) “Writing into a Void: Slavery, History and Representing Blackness in Latin America” (Presented at “New Directions in North American Scholarship on Afro-Mexico, Pennsylvania State University, October 2004; Black Atlantic/African Diaspora Seminar’s: “Workshop on Slavery” Rutgers University, May 2003) “Beyond Social Death: Kin, Incest, and Christian Reckoning in Colonial Mexico” (Presented at “New Studies in American Slavery,” Department of History, University of Washington, May 2002) “‘There is no trade there, I will not name them’: Charting Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Guinea” (Presented at the “Africas of the Americas: An International Symposium,” Committee on Africa and the Americas, University of Maryland, April 2002) “Incest and Inquest: Reconstituting the Colonial Afro-Mexican Past” (Presented at “Engaging North America: Interrogating the African Presence in Mexico,” Institute of African American Research, University of North Carolina, March 2002) “Slavery and Spanish Absolutism in Early Modern Mexico” (Presented at the Globalization Seminar, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, March 2001) “Traditions in the Time of Terror: William H. Sheppard and Afro-American Ethnographic Representation of the Kuba in the Belgian Congo” (Presented at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, December 2000) “Which Law and Culture?: Christian Colonialism and Afromestizo Culture in Colonial Mexico” (Presented at the Thirtieth Annual Meeting of the American Society for Legal History, “October 2000) “Diaspora and the Making of Africa” (Presented at the conference “Crossing Boundaries: The African Diaspora in the New Millennium, sponsored by New York University and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, September 2000) “The Subject in the Plot: National Boundaries and the ‘History’ of the Black Atlantic” (Presented at the Workshop des Graduiertenkollegs: ‘Socialgeschicte von Gruppen, Schichten, Klassen und Eliten,’ Universität Bielefeld, January 2000) “Contextualizing the Transgressive: Miscegenation in New Spain” (Presented at the American Historical Association Meeting, January 1997) “Does She Speak for the African Past?: Mulatas, Miscegenation, and New Spain’s Inquisition” (Presented at the Tenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, June 1996) “Friends to Lovers: Mextizaje in Seventeenth-Century New Spain” (Presented at the XIX International Congresss of the Latin American Studies Association, September 1995)

4 “Africans, Creoles, and Mulattoes: Who Speaks for the African Past” (Presented at the American Historical Association Meeting, January 1995) “Chair and Commentator, “The Multitudinous Faces of the African Diaspora: Race, Labor and Migration in the Caribbean and Central America” (Caribbean Studies Association Conference, Merida, Mexico) “Who Speaks for the African Past?: Race, Slavery and the Ambiguity of Racial Consciousness” (Presented at the conference “The State of African Diaspora Studies: Present Realities and Future Prospects” Chapel Hill, NC, February 1994) “African and Afro-Mexican Household Formation, 1580-1810” (Presented at the conference “Familia y vida privada en America Latina, Siglos XVI a XIX, UNAM y el Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico, May 1993) “Inside the World of Work: African and Afro-Mexican Households, 1580-1650” (Presented at the conference “Unfree Labour in the Development of the Atlantic World,” York University, Toronto, Canada, April 1993) “Was Juan Phelipe Black?: Race and Slavery in Colonial Mexico” (Hurston-James Interdisciplinary Symposium, Duke University, March 1992) Panelist, “Worlds in Collision: The Legacies of Christopher Columbus” (Duke University, February 1992) “African Ethnicity in Seventeenth-Century Mexico” (Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Association of Caribbean Studies, Dakar, Senegal, July 1991) “Race and Class in the 1938 Jamaican Labor Rebellion,” (Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Association of Caribbean Studies, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, July 1990) “Mose Maroons: A Study in Resistance and Accommodation” (Latin American Studies Seminar Series, Duke University, March 1988) “Panelist, “The Afro-American Graduate Student Experience” (Jointly sponsored by the Association of Afro-American Life and History and the American Historical Association, Durham, NC, October 1988) Panel Chair, “Black Resistance in the American Revolution” (The Association of Afro-American Life and History, Durham, NC, October 1988) Panel Moderator, “The Greensboro Klan/Nazi Trail, Chapel Hill, NC April 1984)

Professional Activities 2005 Social Science Research Council, Fellowship Reviewer 2004 National Endowment for the Humanities, Reviewer Spring 2004 FAS Committee on Diversity 2003-2004 Chair, FAS Taskforce on Ethnic and Racial Studies 2003 & 2004 Social Science Research Council, Reviewer 2003-present Director, Black Atlantic/African Diaspora Project, Rutgers Center for 1999-2001 Historical Analysis, Rutgers—the State University of New Jersey 2002-present Editorial Collective, Social Text 2000-2001 National Research Council, Reviewer 1996-2000 National Endowment for the Humanities, Reviewer 1994 & 1995 National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholars Grant Panelist 1993 & 1992 Fulbright-LASPAU Faculty Development Program, Consultant (Interviewed MA and Ph.D. Candidates in the Caribbean) 1993 Manuscript Reviewer: Hispanic American Historical Review, American

5 Historical Review, Colonial Latin American Historical Review The Americas, Social Text