New Paths to Old Questions: Discovering & Digitizing historical Plantation Records in Brazil

In this talk, Prof. Bruno Witzel de Souza will discuss the creation of a physical and digital archive for one of the most important rural units in nineteenth-century Brazil, the Ibicaba plantation, as part of the Modern Endangered Archives Program. Beyond presenting the scientific and managerial challenges of conducting a large-scale project in the digital humanities, this talk will also focus on the potentialities that the new material has for the Humanities and the applied social sciences. In particular, Prof. Witzel de Souza will discuss his current project on the determinants of productivity and the roots of economic inequalities between Afro-Brazilian freedpersons, white Brazilians, and European immigrants in the aftermath of the Brazilian abolition of slavery in 1888.

 

For more information please contact José Juan Pérez Meléndez (jjperdez@ucdavis.edu)

Event sponsored by Department of History, DHI, HIA, Latin American History Workshop