Transnational Networks of Solidarity

Professor Geri Augusto argues that a proper reading list on slavery must include direct engagement with sources from the other Americas and Asia, as well as the conventional “triangle” of Europe, the Caribbean and the USA. This investment in transnational pedagogical practices echoes throughout Augusto’s commitments to the Center. Professor Augosto resided and worked in Africa (primarily Angola and Tanzania) for nearly 20 years, went on to policy work in post-apartheid South Africa, and now has 15 years of collaborative work in Brazil.

From 2023 to 2025, she co-organized at the Watson Institute (now Watson School) a two-year study group on quilombos (maroon communities) in Brazil. She described the experience as “deeply meaningful,” not simply because of the subject matter but primarily from the cross-border relationships nourished during the project. The study group included professors and students enrolled in three public universities in the Brazilian Northeast, each of which has programs geared to quilombola, indigenous and other “traditional” communities. Members on the Brazilian side included scholar-activists, organizers and creative workers residing or working in quilombos. Brown members came from a range of concentrations and disciplines, and included both undergraduates and graduate students. The bilingual English and Portuguese reading list was composed jointly, on both historical and contemporary topics of mutual interest, and sessions were both local and virtual. Quilombos are a contemporary phenomenon— something “happening today” as Professor Augusto asserts–and are central to understanding the afterlives of racial slavery, and the possibilities of new futures. Today’s quilombola residents descend from those who freed themselves and established alternative models for living, but their struggles around land, social justice, and sovereignty continue. 

Augusto’s colleagues and students undertook a complex and challenging task that she welcomes, and has long practiced: putting together thinker-doers from diverse linguistic and disciplinary backgrounds, in this case spanning Brazil, Jamaica, the Southern USA., and several North Atlantic African islands. The study group’s culminating activity was a recent hybrid mini-symposium in Jamaica, at the University of the West Indies, sponsored by the Simmons Center. This gathering put in direct conversation, for the first time, maroon/quilombola organizers, scholars and leaders from Jamaica and Brazil. They spoke with each other, rather than having others speak about them, Augusto stressed. Participants shared perspectives and experiences on a range of topics from socio-environmental disasters to sovereignty and justice to culture and religious practices. Her passion for this project is a testament to her investment in constructing learning communities which span languages, borders, and cultures. 

This engagement appears throughout Professor Augusto’s contributions to the Simmons Center. A participant of Brown’s Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative (NAISI) from its inception, Augusto was an early proponent of collaboration between NAISI and the Simmons Center on the history of slavery in New England. Looking beyond this region, she consistently stressed the importance of Brazil’s experience with slavery in the conceptualization of the “In Slavery’s Wake” exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, a collective partnership between the Simmons Center and a consortium of international museums. Within the ambit of this partnership, Augusto worked with Liverpool’s predominantly black Granby community to establish a winter garden inspired by the one she created at the Simmons Center. While collaborating with The Imagined New conference in South Africa, Augusto participated in digital conversations included on the conference’s website. She believes that knowledge creation and sharing shouldn’t be limited to academic articles and classroom discussions, but should also use “oral and visual modes of cognition," and embodied learning.

“Plants as Epistemic Subjects”: The Symbolic Garden of the Enslaved

When asked about her favorite project at the Simmons Center, Professor Augusto responded without hesitation—The Symbolic Garden of the Enslaved. As the Simmons Center moved to a new building in 2014, the director asked Augusto to create a project honoring the knowledge of the enslaved. She took on the project as a commitment to her ancestors, additionally creating an art assemblage to interpret other aspects of the experiences of the enslaved under plantation bondage, as well as in free maroon communities across the Americas. Augusto says that she is extremely pleased with the reinterpretation of the original garden by an enthusiastic crop of new students associated with the Simmons Center.

Designing the garden expanded her passion for plants as epistemic subjects, pushing her to think intellectually and practically about how both history and knowledge are inscribed on the land, and about what plants and non-humans can teach us. Through this and similar experiences, Augusto has gained new ways of thinking about how the world is known, remembered, and reinterpreted for future generations.

Augusto enjoys (now only occasional) dancing and cooking— her favorite dishes being those she learned to make in Angola. She described indulging in a combination of Angolan, Jamaican, and Southern U.S. dishes on holidays with family.