The Silver Women: How Black Women’s Labor Made the Panama Canal with Joan Flores-Villalobos
Event description
- Academic events
- Diversity and inclusion
- Free
- Open to the public
About the presentation:
The construction of the Panama Canal is typically viewed as a marvel of American ingenuity. What is less understood is the project’s dependence on the labor of Black migrant women. The Silver Women argues that Black West Indian women made the canal construction possible by providing the indispensable everyday labor of social reproduction. They built a provisioning economy that fed, housed, and cared for the segregated workforce, in effect subsidizing the construction effort and its racial calculus. But while subject to racial discrimination, West Indian women found ways to subvert the legal, moral and economic parameters imperial authorities sought to impose on Black migrant laborers. These women developed important strategies of claims-making, kinship, community building and market adaptation that helped them navigate the contradictions and violence of U.S. empire.
About the speaker:
Joan Flores-Villalobos is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern California and received her Ph.D. from New York University in African Diaspora History. Her work focuses on gender, empire, race and capitalism in Latin America and the Caribbean and has received support from the Ford Foundation and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars.
