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Dr. Justin García, associate professor of anthropology at Millersville University, recently delivered a presentation at the ALARI First Continental Conference on Afro-Latin American Studies at Harvard University. The conference was sponsored by the Afro-Latin American Research Institute (ALARI), which is part of Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. The conference, December 11-13, featured more than 200 social sciences and humanities academics from the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. A total of 48 panel sessions took place during the three-day trilingual conference, with some panels conducted in English, some in Spanish, and some in Portuguese. The title of García’s presentation was “Who, and What, is ‘Latino’ Anymore?; Teaching Latino/a Studies in an Age of Afro-Latinidad, Intersectionality and Anti-Essentialism.”
“It was a great honor to be selected to present at the ALARI Afro-Latin American Studies Conference,” remarked García. “I was able to network with various scholars who research Afro-Latino experiences and identities – including some scholars whose works I have assigned as readings in my own courses. This was a very exciting and important conference, because afro-latinidad [Afro-Latino identities, experiences and consciousness] has been a relatively neglected topic within both Latino Studies and broader discourses of racial and ethnic studies. Delivering a presentation at Harvard is an unforgettable experience for me, given the history, prestige and intellectual legacy of that campus.”
In addition to teaching cultural, physical/biological and linguistic anthropology classes, García also often teaches courses for Millersville’s Latino Studies and African American Studies minors. He has created a new 300-level course titled “Afro-Latino Cultural Experiences” that was officially approved by the University earlier this month and will be offered during the Fall 2020 semester.
