Ana Lucia Araujo

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Ana Lucia Araujo
Ana Lucia Araujo.jpg
BornAna Lucia Araujo
Santa Maria, Brazil
OccupationHistorian, professor, author
NationalityAmerican
Education Université Laval (Ph.D. in History)
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
Website
www.analuciaaraujo.org

Ana Lucia Araujo is an American historian, art historian, author, and professor of history at Howard University. She is a member of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Slave Route Project. [1] Her scholarship focuses on the transnational history, public memory, visual culture, and heritage of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade.

Contents

Early life

Araujo was born and raised in Brazil. She earned her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil (1995), and a MA in history from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Porto Alegre, Brazil (1998). She moved to Canada in 1999 and obtained a PhD in Art History from Université Laval (Québec City, Canada) in 2004. Her main advisor was David Karel (1944-2007). [2] In 2007 she also earned in cotutelle a PhD in history (Université Laval) and a doctorate in Social and Historical Anthropology from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris, France). [3] Her advisors were Africanist historian Bogumil Jewsiewicki and Africanist anthropologist Jean-Paul Colleyn  [ fr ]. [4]

Career

Araujo received a postdoctoral fellowship from FQRSC (Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture) in 2008, for the project titled: "Right to Image: Restitution of Cultural Heritage and Construction of the Memory of the Heirs of Slavery" but moved to Washington DC to take a tenure-track position of assistant professor in the Department of History at Howard University. She was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 2011, and became a full professor in 2014. [5] She lectures throughout the United States, Canada, Brazil, Portugal, South Africa, France, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Argentina, in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Honors and awards

Research

Araujo's work explores the public memory of slavery in the Atlantic world. [7] Araujo's first book published in French, Romantisme tropical: l'aventure d'un peintre français au Brésil, examines how French travelogues, especially the travel account of French artist François-Auguste Biard (1799-1882), Deux années au Brésil, contributed to constructing a particular image of Brazil in Europe. [8] In 2015, the University of New Mexico Press published a revised, translated version of this book as Brazil Through French Eyes: A Nineteenth-Century Artist in the Tropics. [9]

Araujo has written many books and articles on history and memory of slavery, including Public Memory of Slavery: Victims and Perpetrators in the Atlantic World (2010), Shadows of the Slave Past: Memory, Slavery, and Heritage (2014), Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History (2017), Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past (2020), and Museums and Atlantic Slavery (2021). [10]

Public Memory of Slavery, Araujo's first book in English, studies the historical connections between Bahia in Brazil and the Kingdom of Dahomey in the modern Benin, during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, and how in these two areas social actors are engaging in remembering and commemorating the slave past to forge particular identities through the construction of monuments, memorials, and museums. [11] Echoing her research in Dahomey and the Atlantic slave trade, her comments on the movie The Woman King were featured in Slate and the Washington Post . Araujo underscored that the movie misrepresented King Gezo (1818–1859) as attempting to end Dahomey's slave trade. [12] [13]

In her second book, Shadows of the Slave Past (2014), Araujo continued to focus on the processes of memorialization of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade in the Americas, with a particular emphasis on Brazil and the United States, by focusing on the sites of embarkation in Africa such as the House of Slaves in Gorée Island, and ports of disembarkation in the Americas such as Salvador and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, as well as Charleston and New York City in the United States, plantation heritage sites, the commemoration of the great emancipators Lincoln (United States) and Princess Isabel (Brazil), and the commemoration of slave rebels such as Zumbi, Chirino, and others in the Americas. [14]

Her book Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History (2017) is a comprehensive history of the demands of financial and material reparations for slavery and the slave trade in the Atlantic world. [15] [16] The book emphasizes the long history of demands of reparations for slavery from the period of slavery to the present, by exploring these demands in countries such as the United States, Brazil, Cuba, and the Caribbean. By surveying the work of several activists and organizations such as Belinda Sutton, Queen Audley Moore, James Forman and the Black Manifesto, the Republic of New Africa and the rise of the Caribbean Ten Point Plan, Araujo insists on the central role of Black women in formulating demands of financial and material reparations for slavery. [17]

In Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past (2020) she discusses the controversy regarding the construction and removal of monuments commemorating slave owners and slave traders, and how slavery is represented in George Washington's Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. [18] [19] [20] [21] Araujo often intervenes in the public debates discussing the removal of Confederate monuments in the United States, by arguing that their removal is not about erasing history, but about battles of public memory. She has also emphasized that the removal of monuments related to slavery is a global trend. [22] Her work has addressed the removal of monuments and memorials during the worldwide protests which erupted after the murder of George Floyd on May 27, 2020. [23] [24]

Her most recent book explores the role of gifts in the Atlantic slave trade, by following the trajectory of a precious silver ceremonial sword fabricated in the French port of La Rochelle to be offered as a gift to an African slave trader in the West Central African port of Cabinda (in today's Angola) in the late eighteenth century, and one century later was mysteriously looted from Abomey, the capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey (in today's Republic of Benin) by the French army hundreds of miles away.

A public scholar, Araujo's work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, Radio Canada, Radio France, National Geographic,O Público, and other media outlets around the world. Her op-eds have also appeared in the Washington Post, History News Network, Newsweek, Slate, and Intercept Brasil.

Bibliography

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dahomey</span> 1600–1904 kingdom in West Africa

The Kingdom of Dahomey was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. It developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by expanding south to conquer key cities like Whydah belonging to the Kingdom of Whydah on the Atlantic coast which granted it unhindered access to the tricontinental Atlantic Slave Trade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atlantic slave trade</span>

The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage. Europeans established a coastal slave trade in the 15th century and trade to the Americas began in the 16th century, lasting through the 19th century. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from Central Africa and West Africa and had been sold by West African slave traders to European slave traders, while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids. European slave traders gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas. Some Portuguese and Europeans participated in slave raids. As the National Museums Liverpool explains: "European traders captured some Africans in raids along the coast, but bought most of them from local African or African-European dealers." Many European slave traders generally did not participate in slave raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade because of malaria that was endemic in the African continent. An article from PBS explains: "Malaria, dysentery, yellow fever, and other diseases reduced the few Europeans living and trading along the West African coast to a chronic state of ill health and earned Africa the name 'white man's grave.' In this environment, European merchants were rarely in a position to call the shots." The earliest known use of the phrase began in the 1830s, and the earliest written evidence was found in an 1836 published book by F. H. Rankin. Portuguese coastal raiders found that slave raiding was too costly and often ineffective and opted for established commercial relations.

Adandozan was a king of the Kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, from 1797 until 1818. His rule ended with a coup by his brother Ghezo who then erased Adandozan from the official history resulting in high uncertainty about many aspects of his life. Adandozan took over from his father Agonglo in 1797 but was quite young at the time and so there was a regent in charge of the kingdom until 1804. Dealing with the economic depression that had defined the administrations of his father Agonglo and grandfather Kpengla, Adandozan tried to reduce slavery to decrease European trade, and when these failed reform the economy to focus on agriculture. Unfortunately, these efforts did not end domestic dissent and in 1818 at the Annual Customs of Dahomey, Ghezo and Francisco Félix de Sousa, a powerful Brazilian slave trader, organized a coup d'état and replaced Adandozan. He was left alive and lived until the 1860s hidden in the palaces while he was largely erased from official royal history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ghezo</span> King of Dahomey from 1818 to 1858

Ghezo, also spelled Gezo, was King of Dahomey from 1818 until 1858. Ghezo replaced his brother Adandozan as king through a coup with the assistance of the Brazilian slave trader Francisco Félix de Sousa. He ruled over the kingdom during a tumultuous period, punctuated by the British blockade of the ports of Dahomey in order to stop the Atlantic slave trade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fon people</span> Gbe ethnic group

The Fon people, also called Dahomeans, Fon nu or Agadja are a Gbe ethnic group. They are the largest ethnic group in Benin, found particularly in its south region; they are also found in southwest Nigeria and Togo. Their total population is estimated to be about 3,500,000 people, and they speak the Fon language, a member of the Gbe languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dahomey Amazons</span> Female regiment in the Kingdom of Dahomey

The Dahomey Amazons were a Fon all-female military regiment of the Kingdom of Dahomey that existed from the 17th century until the late 19th century. They were the only female army in modern history. They were named Amazons by Western Europeans who encountered them, due to the story of the female warriors of Amazons in Greek mythology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gorée</span> Island and district of Dakar, Senegal

Île de Gorée is one of the 19 communes d'arrondissement of the city of Dakar, Senegal. It is an 18.2-hectare (45-acre) island located 2 kilometres at sea from the main harbour of Dakar, famous as a destination for people interested in the Atlantic slave trade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">King of Dahomey</span>

The King of Dahomey was the ruler of Dahomey, a West African kingdom in the southern part of present-day Benin, which lasted from 1600 until 1900 when the French Third Republic abolished the political authority of the Kingdom. The rulers served a prominent position in Fon ancestor worship leading the Annual Customs and this important position caused the French to bring back the exiled king of Dahomey for ceremonial purposes in 1910. Since 2000, there have been rival claimants as king and there has so far been no political solution. The Palace and seat of government were in the town of Abomey. Early historiography of the King of Dahomey presented them as absolute rulers who formally owned all property and people of the kingdom. However, recent histories have emphasized that there was significant political contestation limiting the power of the king and that there was a female ruler of Dahomey, Hangbe, who was largely written out of early histories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slave Coast of West Africa</span> Historical name of a region in West Africa

The Slave Coast is a historical region along the Atlantic coast of West Africa, encompassing parts of modern-day Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. It is located along the Bight of Biafra and the Bight of Benin that is located between the Volta River and the Lagos Lagoon.

<i>Maafa</i> Swahili neologism for the Atlantic Slave Trade

The Maafa, the African Holocaust, the Holocaust of Enslavement, or the Black Holocaust are political neologisms popularized since 1988 to describe the history and ongoing effects of atrocities inflicted upon Black people worldwide. Of particular focus are those committed by non-Africans, which continue to the present day through imperialism, colonialism and other forms of oppression.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">François-Auguste Biard</span> French painter

François-Auguste Biard, born François Thérèse Biard was a French painter, known for his adventurous travels and the works depicting his experiences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compensated emancipation</span> Form of abolishing slavery in which former slaveowners were paid

Compensated emancipation was a method of ending slavery, under which the enslaved person's owner received compensation from the government in exchange for manumitting the slave. This could be monetary, and it could allow the owner to retain the slave for a period of labor as an indentured servant. In practice, cash compensation rarely was equal to the slave's market value.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francisco Félix de Sousa</span> Portuguese-Brazilian slave trader (1754–1849)

Francisco Félix de Souza was a Brazilian slave trader who was deeply influential in the regional politics of pre-colonial West Africa. He founded Afro-Brazilian communities in areas that are now part of those countries, and went on to become the "chachá" of Ouidah, a title that conferred no official powers but commanded local respect in the Kingdom of Dahomey, where, after being jailed by King Adandozan of Dahomey, he helped Ghezo ascend the throne in a coup d'état. He became chacha to the new king, a curious phrase that has been explained as originating from his saying "(...) já, já.", a Portuguese phrase meaning something will be done right away.

The History of the Kingdom of Dahomey spans 400 years from around 1600 until 1904 with the rise of the Kingdom of Dahomey as a major power on the Atlantic coast of modern-day Benin until French conquest. The kingdom became a major regional power in the 1720s when it conquered the coastal kingdoms of Allada and Whydah. With control over these key coastal cities, Dahomey became a major center in the Atlantic Slave Trade until 1852 when the British imposed a naval blockade to stop the trade. War with the French began in 1892 and the French took over the Kingdom of Dahomey in 1894. The throne was vacated by the French in 1900, but the royal families and key administrative positions of the administration continued to have a large impact in the politics of the French administration and the post-independence Republic of Dahomey, renamed Benin in 1975. Historiography of the kingdom has had a significant impact on work far beyond African history and the history of the kingdom forms the backdrop for a number of novels and plays.

La Presse Porto-Novienne was a French language weekly republican socialist newspaper published from Porto-Novo, Dahomey. The newspaper was founded in 1931 by Vincent Moreira Pinto. It carried subtitles in Yoruba language, and had a Yoruba language section.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reparations for slavery</span> Political justice concept

Reparations for slavery refers to providing benefits to victims of slavery and/or their descendants. There are concepts for reparations in legal philosophy and reparations in transitional justice. Reparations can take many forms, including practical and financial assistance to the descendants of enslaved people, acknowledgements or apologies to peoples or nations negatively affected by slavery, or honouring the memories of people who were enslaved by naming things after them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Callie House</span> African American political activist (1861–1928)

Callie House (1861–1928) was a leader of the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, one of the first organizations to campaign for reparations for slavery in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heloísa Alberto Torres</span> Brazilian anthropologist and museum director

Heloísa Alberto Torres, also known as Dona Heloísa, was Brazilian anthropologist and museum director.

Bogumil (Bogumił) Jewsiewicki Koss is a Polish-Canadian historian and an Africanist specialising in the history of Central Africa, notably the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the social usage of visual memory.

The De Souza family, otherwise known as the De Sousa family, is a prominent Beninese clan. Its founder, Francisco Felix de Sousa, was the Brazilian-born viceroy of Ouidah in the Kingdom of Dahomey.

References

  1. ↑ "Members | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization". www.unesco.org. Retrieved 2022-09-26.
  2. ↑ Ana Lucia Araujo, Romantisme tropical: L'aventure d'un peintre français au Brésil (Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval, 2008), VII.
  3. ↑ "CV Araujo" . Retrieved 2022-09-27.
  4. ↑ Araujo, Ana Lucia. "Mémoires de l'esclavage et de la traite des esclaves dans l'Atlantique Sud: Enjeux de la patrimonialisation au Brésil et au Bénin (PhD dissertation, Université Laval, 2007), iv.
  5. ↑ "Ana Lucia Araujo | Howard Profiles".
  6. ↑ "Pedro Pascal and World Bank's Ajay Banga among those named to Carnegie's 2023 Great Immigrants list". AP News. 2023-06-28. Retrieved 2024-06-17.
  7. ↑ "HU History: Faculty" . Retrieved 23 August 2021.
  8. ↑ "Romantisme tropical. L'aventure illustrée d'un peintre français au Brésil" . Retrieved 23 August 2021.
  9. ↑ "Brazil through French Eyes". University of New Mexico Press. 27 September 2017. Retrieved 16 August 2018.
  10. ↑ "Ana Lucia Araujo - Google Scholar Citations" . Retrieved 16 August 2018– via scholar.google.com.
  11. ↑ "Public Memory of Slavery: Victims and Perpetrators in the South Atlantic by Ana Lucia Araujo". Cambria Press. Retrieved 16 August 2018.
  12. ↑ Araujo, Ana Lucia (16 September 2022). "The Woman King Softens the Truth of the Slave Trade". Slate. Retrieved 2 September 2023.
  13. ↑ Araujo, Ana Lucia; Preston Blier, Suzanne (20 September 2022). "What The Woman King gets wrong — and right — about Dahomey's warriors". Washington Post. Retrieved 2 September 2023.
  14. ↑ "Shadows of the Slave Past". Routledge. Retrieved 24 August 2021.
  15. ↑ "V Books: Prof. Ana Araujo Pens a Comprehensive History of Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade in New Book". Vibe. 30 November 2017. Retrieved 16 August 2018.
  16. ↑ "Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A New Book on the Idea of Reparations". African American Intellectual History Society. 5 January 2018. Retrieved 16 August 2018.
  17. ↑ "The History of Black Women Championing Demands for Reparations". HNN. 19 May 2019. Retrieved 27 September 2022.
  18. ↑ "The Bloomsbury Academic Podcast - Episode 19". YouTube. Retrieved 21 August 2021.
  19. ↑ "Howard University professor to present 'Slavery at Mount Vernon and Monticello' presentation at University of Lynchburg". 15 February 2021. Retrieved 21 August 2021.
  20. ↑ "Harvard's Center for European Studies Hosts Seminar on the Removal of Pro-Slavery Monuments" . Retrieved 21 August 2021.
  21. ↑ "What to Keep: Reassessing public art in Europe in light of increased racial awareness". 26 October 2020. Retrieved 21 August 2021.
  22. ↑ "No, Confederate Monuments Don't Preserve History. They Manipulate It". Newsweek . Retrieved 21 August 2021.
  23. ↑ Araujo, Ana Lucia. "Toppling monuments is a global movement. And it works". The Washington Post . Retrieved 2 September 2023.
  24. ↑ Morris, Phillip (29 June 2020). "As monuments fall, how does the world reckon with a racist past?". National Geographic . Archived from the original on February 17, 2021. Retrieved 2 September 2023.
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