U.S. Southern and Latin American Studies: Postcolonial and Inter-American Approaches

This essay focuses on sketching the role played by race in justifying, establishing, and maintaining (neo)colonial relations of power in the U.S. South, Latin America, and the Caribbean, as well as suggesting how the study of the African diaspora in these regions offers key insights into the experience of postcolonialism and the "Southern" experience in its broadest sense. The essay also addresses concerns that postcolonial studies, as well as Inter-American studies, represent critical approaches used in the U.S. to study Latin America in a manner that reinforces inequalities between academic institutions in the North and (global) South.