“Understanding what is hidden in plain sight”. It is from this statement that I want to introduce the two-day workshop Cinema and Slavery that I organized with the help of the Simmons Center managers, coordinators, and the Center’s director in the Fall semester, 2023. Seven scholars working in Universities in North America, Brazil, and Europe convened for a reflection on images and power, colonial gazes, and how we can address and deconstruct these narratives with our students. I wish to express gratitude to all the colleagues and the Simmons Center’s community. After the workshop, the collaboration evolved into an edited volume project. The workshop was critical for my course How We Remember: Collective Memories of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism in Contemporary Nonfiction Cinema. I want to conclude by thanking the students for their questions and insights. Thanks to the exchange with the students, the theoretical work undertaken over the past years has acquired full meaning.

Leonora Masini ’22 Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Slavery and the Public Humanities
 

Since starting, I have grown tremendously as a postdoc here in the Simmons Center. The networking opportunities with other slavery and justice scholars, the timely feedback on the book manuscript, and planning the Freedom Literacy workshop have offered real-world training that has stretched my capacity for university leadership and the professoriate. Last year, I wrote two peer-reviewed articles that were accepted for publication and I received the Princeton Supporting Diverse Voices Fellowship to write and submit my book manuscript to Princeton University Press. While here at Brown, many of my colleagues have been invested in my learning and development. They have gone the extra mile to see to it that I will be successful in the next stages of my journey. I am grateful for the time, the resources, and the connections that have been cultivated here.

Latoya M. Teague
Simmons Center/Watson Institute Joint Historical Injustice and Democracy Postdoctoral Research Associate

My time as the ACLS Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow was deeply transformative. I am immensely grateful for the bonds of intellectual camaraderie that I formed with both colleagues and students. Professor Bogues pushed my thinking in ways that have forever enhanced my research, guiding me back to a transnational interrogation of the Black Radical Tradition. Playing pick-up basketball with Dr. Scott and making origami with Kiku were fun diversions and cherished memories. My students were as brilliant as any that I’ve had the privilege of learning with.

Gabriel Regalado
ACLS Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Research Associate
 

I am deeply grateful for my time at the Ruth J. Simmons Center and the John Carter Brown Library. Throughout the past year, I have had the privilege of collaborating with exceptionally inspiring and supportive faculty, staff, and fellows who have significantly enriched my research. Engaging with an interdisciplinary cohort of colleagues, I enjoyed fruitful discussions that offered fresh perspectives on my project and led me onto unexpected research paths. Conversations with geographers, linguists, and political scientists provided invaluable insights into interpreting my sources and framing my project. 

Notably, I engaged in extensive dialogues with the Simmons Center/Watson Institute Joint Fellow and my office mate on topics ranging from research methodologies to navigating the academic job market. These conversations have strengthened both my scholarly endeavors and my commitment to academia. Over the course of the year, I workshopped a chapter of my dissertation and delivered my Fellows’ Talk. The feedback I received continues to inform my manuscript editing, tentatively titled “Strategic Ties: Family, Land, and Plantation Connections in Maroon Jamaica.” Additionally, my postdoctoral fellowship provided the time and resources to attend multiple conferences in the Northeast and access academic talks and seminars covering diverse subjects from Atlantic slavery to incarceration. 

Overall, my experience at the Center and Library has been pivotal in advancing my research and scholarly growth, for which I am exceptionally grateful.

Alycia Hall
Simmons Center/JCB Joint Postdoctoral Research Associate in Slavery and Justice