Dr. Sherwin Bryant
Assistant Professor of African American Studies and History Address: African American Studies Department 2-320 Kresge Hall 1880 S. Campus Dr. Evanston, IL 60208-2209 Phone:(847) 491-3756 Email: s-bryant@northwestern.edu

Courses:

AFAM/HIST 212-1 (Intro. to African American History)

AFAM 442  (Africans in Colonial Latin America)

AFAM 348 (Comparative Slavery)

AFAM 345 (Politics of Afro-Latin America)

Degree:

Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 2005

M.A. The Ohio State University, History, 1998

B.A. North Carolina Central University, History and Education, 1995

Current Research:

Sherwin Bryant (PhD Ohio State University, 2005) is a member of the Department of African American Studies with a courtesy joint appointment in the History Department.  He specializes in colonial Latin American History with a particular emphasis upon slavery, race, and the early modern African Diaspora.  His first book project, tentatively entitled "Rivers of Gold, Sweet Valleys, and Sordid Cities:  Slavery and the Struggle for Autonomy and Rights in the Kingdom of Quito, 1690-1810," grows out of his doctoral dissertation and offers the first comprehensive analysis of slavery and slave life in the north Andes  (Ecuador and southern Colombia).  It explores the untold story of slavery and the lives of slaves by comparing three industries (gold mining, sugar production, and urban slavery) within three regions of the kingdom—Barbacoas (southern Colombia), the Chota-Mira valley just north of Quito, and the coastal port-city of Guayaquil.  Here, Bryant explores how the institution of slavery was shaped and reshaped through a series of negotiations between slaves, slave owners and the colonial state.  He is the co-editor of Africans to Spanish America (Under contract with University of Illinois Press) with Ben Vinson and Rachel O’Toole. His articles on slavery and resistance have appeared in Colonial Latin American Review and The Americas. A Fulbright recipient and Ford Foundation Fellow, Bryant was recently an Andrew Mellon Fellow at the Newberry Library (2006-07) and the Paul W. McQuillen fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University (summer 2007).

Recent Awards:

Paul W. McQuillen Fellow, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, (2007)

Andrew Mellon Fellow, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. (2006-7)

Recent Publications:

Rivers of Gold, Sweet Valleys, and Sordid Cities: Slavery and the Struggle for Autonomy  and Rights in the Kingdom of Quito, 1690-1810, (in progress).

Africans to Spanish America: New Directions co-edited with Ben Vinson and Rachel  O’Toole (Under contract with the University of Illinois Press).

"Finding Freedom in Colonial Quito" in the Ecuador Reader edited by Steve Striffler  (forthcoming with Duke University Press).

"Finding Gold, Forming Slavery: The Creation of a Classical Slave Society, Popayán,  1600-1800," The Americas, 63.1 (2006): 81-112.

"Enslaved Rebels, Fugitives, and Litigants:  The Resistance Continuum in Colonial  Quito," Colonial Latin American Review, 13.1 (2004): 7-46.