The Politics of Blackness and Indigeneity in Peru

This interdisciplinary program examines diversity in a non-US setting by asking how identity and history are constructed, negotiated, and renegotiated in Peru through artistic production and expressive culture, and how art engages the politics of historical memory and imaginations of Blackness and Indigeneity. Students will study the longer history of Peru while observing, working alongside, and learning from performing artists, community leaders, and activists who have played crucial roles in preserving Afro-Peruvian and Indigenous artistic and performative traditions. By bringing the arts together with scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, we will situate the work of artists in a broader context and explore how artistic production constitutes a way of thinking historically about identity, diversity, and power. How, for example, do dance, music, and related forms of artistic production such as costume-making create spaces, both figurative and real, for wrestling with the past to confront and challenge the injustices of the present? How do they enable individuals and collectives to imagine alternative political and social configurations and articulate forms of anti-racism? How do they enable people to make meaning of the past and engage the urgency of the present? Finally, what can the study of artistic production and cultural expression among such groups teach us about the complexities of race, equity, and diversity in various contexts in Peru and beyond?