Dissertation title

"We Dance With Existence: Black-Indigenous Placemaking in the Land Known as México and Beyond"

Biography

Ashley Ngozi Agbasoga’s research includes social movements, racialization, blackness, indigeneity, nation-state formation and geography. Her dissertation, titled We Dance With Existence: Black-Indigenous Placemaking in the Land Known as México and Beyond, illuminates how Black, Indigenous, and Black-Indigenous women engage in placemaking practices that reveal and unsettle notions of race, place, and (nation-) statehood in México. Merging ethnographic and archival research conducted from 2016-2020 in Guerrero, Oaxaca, Veracruz and Mexico City with theories and methodologies from Anthropology, History, Black Studies, and Native/Indigenous Studies, Agbasoga argues that Black-Indigenous placemaking practices create two critical ruptures: first, in the (re)produced bifurcation of blackness and indigeneity, and second, in the Mexican state’s racialization of its territory as mestizo. These ruptures generate space to think about alternative possibilities for Black, Indigenous, and Black-Indigenous communities throughout what is known as “The Americas”/Abya Yala.

Post-fellowship placement: Assistant Professor New York University, Gallatin School of Individualized Study