Africanizing Europe: Cape Verdean Perspectives on Race, Class, Gender and Identity in a Globalizing Portugal

FAIN: FT-54309-06

Alma Gottlieb
Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (Champaign, IL 61801-3620)

In summer '06, I will inaugurate a humanistically oriented fieldwork project on the Cape Verdean diaspora. During this initial phase of a long-term project, I will focus on how Cape Verdeans in Lisbon experience their transplanted/transcultural existence. Paying attention to generation within both family and community, and privileging the voices of individuals to give texture to their experiences, I will explore how race, class and gender shape the situated identity of Cape Verdean adults, youths and children in the Portuguese diaspora. In later phases of this project, I will focus on specific issues that may arise from this initial phase, and I will expand the project to Cape Verdeans living elsewhere in Europe and New England.

Associated Products

(Un)Packing a Cultural Suitcase: Anthropological Perspectives on the New African Migration to Europe and the US (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: (Un)Packing a Cultural Suitcase: Anthropological Perspectives on the New African Migration to Europe and the US
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: When people leave their natal countries and move to another nation, some imagine that they’re just leaving for a temporary period; others plan to move permanently. No matter their circumstances and plans, all migrants bring not only suitcases but cultural “baggage” from their former homeland--systems of cultural knowledge of how the world works that, rich or poor, desperate or hopeful, all migrants bring with them on their journeys to a new world. In this talk, I focus on cultural baggage brought by members of the new African diaspora to Europe and the U.S.
Date: 10/09/2006
Primary URL: http://http://iscte-iul.pt/home.aspx
Conference Name: New Contexts of Migration: When the Origin Transforms the Destination, Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho, Lisbon

Two Visions of Africa: Reflections on Fieldwork in the "Animist Bush" and the Urban, Jewish, Cape Verdean Diaspora (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Two Visions of Africa: Reflections on Fieldwork in the "Animist Bush" and the Urban, Jewish, Cape Verdean Diaspora
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: Many cultural anthropologists assume that, as with spouses, we choose fieldsites for life. Yet over the past century, plenty of anthropologists have switched communities, and some now travel regularly from one fieldsite to another—sometimes pursuing diasporic communities, sometimes their own restless scholarly imaginations. Is the old-fashioned idea of committing to a single field area over the course of a career outmoded? In this paper, I explore my own struggles overcoming the One Scholar/One Fieldsite model. After 25+ years working in and writing about a small, rural, “animist” community in the rain forest of Côte d’Ivoire, I made the difficult but enticing decision to begin research in a radically different space: the European capital city of Lisbon. This move entailed several tectonic shifts: pursuing consultants across a city of almost three million (rather than finding curious neighbors right outside my front door in a village of a few hundred); learning two languages (Portuguese, Cape Verdean Crioulo); mastering new eras (Jewish and Cape Verdean histories and diasporas); working with highly educated elites (rather than peasants trained in the oral tradition); forging relations with new colleagues (in Jewish studies, lusophone studies, migration studies, European studies); working with people along the “race” spectrum (rather than only those classified as “black”); and studying a highly mobile population spread across three continents (rather than a highly rooted community with enduring ties to place). In this paper, I navigate personal and professional biographies as I explore disciplinary hesitations--and pleasures—involved in taking on challenging professional transformations.
Date: 11/09/2007
Primary URL: http://www.americananthro.org
Primary URL Description: Main website of the sponsoring organization (American Anthropological Association)
Conference Name: 106th Annual Meeting, American Anthropological Association

Two Visions of Africa: Fieldwork in an ‘Animist’ Bush and in an Urban Diaspora (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Two Visions of Africa: Fieldwork in an ‘Animist’ Bush and in an Urban Diaspora
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: In this talk, I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of single-sited and multi-sited research in very personal ways, looking back on my two major research projects--the first, single-sited (in small villages in the rain forest of Côte d'Ivoire), the second, now multi-sited (across the global Cape Verdean diaspora).
Date: 2/26/2011
Conference Name: Keynote talk, Crossing Borders Convocation, University of Iowa (Iowa City)

Crossing Religious Borders: Jewish Cape Verdeans (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Crossing Religious Borders: Jewish Cape Verdeans
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: Over the past half-millenium, the people who became Cape Verdeans crossed a dizzying number of borders. Linguistic, racial, maritime, and national borders are those most commonly known. Yet the religious border that many Cape Verdeans crossed--from Judaism to Catholicism—may have been the most profound and transformative, while also remaining the most obscure. In this talk, I profile the experiences of a group of contemporary Cape Verdeans living in the Boston region who are now engaged in an active dialogue with the Jewish heritage that marks their national history—and that, increasingly, many Cape Verdeans are coming to recognize marks their own familial genealogies. The cumulative effect of nine years of what is now an annual Joint Cape Verdean-Jewish Seder held in Boston is starting to produce a broadening awareness of what was gained and lost when Cape Verdean Jews crossed the border to Christianity. In this talk, I profile several contemporary Cape Verdeans’ experiences coming to terms with this religious border crossing.
Date: 10/23/2014
Primary URL: http://apsa.us
Primary URL Description: This is the main website for the sponsoring organization of the conference, the American Portuguese Studies Association.
Secondary URL: http://apsa.us/2014-international-conference/
Secondary URL Description: This is the website for the 2014 annual conference.
Conference Name: 9th International Conference, American Portuguese Studies Association (Albuquerque)

Crossing Religious Borders: Jews and Cabo Verdeans (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Crossing Religious Borders: Jews and Cabo Verdeans
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: From their outpost in the North Atlantic, the inhabitants of Cabo Verde's strategically located islands have looked beyond their shores ever since the uninhabited archipelago's rediscovery by European mariners in 1460. Over the past five-and-a-half centuries, the Cabo Verdean diaspora has intersected with other diasporas across Africa, Europe, North America, South America, and South Asia. This early itinerant history, while well studied in broad strokes, contains one theme just beginning to be explored by scholars: its Jewish connections. In this talk, I focus on the conjoined Jewish-Cabo Verdean diaspora, exploring how this largely unknown yet historically significant dual diaspora is now being re-evaluated among contemporary Cabo Verdeans themselves (both on and off the islands). Parallel to the efforts of many contemporary Portuguese and Brazilians, many Cabo Verdeans are now curious to chart and reclaim the somewhat submerged yet historically critical Jewish component of their island's identity. They are seeking out both their Jewish family history and their peers with Jewish ancestry. This ethnography of Cabo Verdeans with Jewish ancestry will summarize contemporary activities in which many Cabo Verdeans are now engaging in Lisbon, Praia, and New England, where they are reassessing the frequently overlooked Jewish underside to both their family histories and their national identity. The reluctance of Africanist and Jewish studies anthropologists to engage with one other will be addressed in light of the robust crossed lines of Jews and Cabo Verdeans across more than a half-millenium.
Date: 12/6/2014
Conference Name: 113th Annual Meeting, American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.COM.

Jewish Cape Verdeans? Putting Jewish Studies and African Studies into Conversation (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Jewish Cape Verdeans? Putting Jewish Studies and African Studies into Conversation
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: The discipline of Religious Studies tends to draw specific geographic boundaries around the past and present communities of particular religions, then investigate specific religious traditions accordingly. Despite the more fluid nature inherent in its name, the same could be said of Diaspora Studies, which tends to focus on the major, tried-and-true diasporic trajectories, and to elide lesser-known diasporas. Moreover, the same might equally be said of Border Studies, which—again, despite the mobility inherent in its name—tends to focus on certain kinds of borders (both geographic and conceptual) and not others. In this talk, I aim to bring Jewish Studies and African Studies into a productive conversation with one another by engaging theoretical strains of Religious Studies, Diaspora Studies, and Border Studies that are not typically combined by scholars. In bringing African Studies and Jewish Studies into conversation, can we ask new questions? Discover new realities? I take up this set of comparative questions by means of a case study of Cape Verde, a place where contemporary residents both on and off the islands of this island nation are themselves crossing new conceptual boundaries as they (re)discover their Jewish ancestry and, consequently, re-imagine their identity.
Date: 02/20/2015
Primary URL: http://www2.indstate.edu/SCCR2015/
Primary URL Description: Website for the conference
Secondary URL: http://www.sccr.org
Secondary URL Description: Sponsoring organization for the conference.
Conference Name: 44th Annual Meeting, Society for Cross-Cultural Research (Albuquerque)

Jewish Cape Verdeans? Putting African Studies and Jewish Studies into Conversation (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Jewish Cape Verdeans? Putting African Studies and Jewish Studies into Conversation
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: In the contemporary era, many Cape Verdeans both on and off the islands are (re)discovering the Jewish history of their nation, their individual families, or both. This discovery takes many forms. Some are researching the genetic foundations of their ancestry by ordering DNA tests now readily available at a modest cost. Others are using social media as well as online and other scholarly resources to research their Jewish history. At an annual Passover Seder held in Boston for the past decade, some Cape Verdeans have encountered meaningful discoveries of their submerged Jewish history. As they engage in all these pathways, many Cape Verdeans are newly learning of the Jewish foundations to daily practices deeply embedded in their lives (from food preferences to life cycle rituals). The spectrum of engagement ranges from vague awareness of distant Jewish ancestors to full conversion to Orthodox Jewish practice. No matter the level of engagement, as Cape Verdeans encounter the Jewish component of their genealogy, many are expanding their understanding of their identity. In this talk, I aim to put African studies and Jewish studies into a productive conversation by asking two complementary questions. At the macro, theoretical level, What might we learn about Cabo Verde once we acknowledge the deeply Jewish history of this island nation? At the micro, individual level, what might we learn about contemporary Cabo Verdeans’ own complex and expanding understandings of self as we explore their process of (re)discovering new components of family history and identity?
Date: 06/13/2015
Primary URL: https://www.facebook.com/PedroPiresInstituteForCVStudies
Primary URL Description: Facebook page for the sponsoring organization of the conference.
Secondary URL: http://www.bridgew.edu/news-events/news/cultural-exchange
Secondary URL Description: Press release about the conference.
Conference Name: 1st International Conference on Cape Verdean Studies, Bridgewater State University/Pedro Pires Institute for Cape Verdean Studies

Crossing Religious Borders: Jewish Cabo Verdeans? (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Crossing Religious Borders: Jewish Cabo Verdeans?
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: The Cape Verde islands represent a uniquely riveting space from which to explore religious border crossings. Empty of all human habitation at the time of Portuguese discovery of the archipelago, the islands soon became populated by a blend of people from Catholic, Jewish, and indigenous African religious traditions, where, arguably, the world’s first “creolized” population was created. Many Cabo Verdeans are increasingly curious to chart and reclaim the somewhat submerged yet historically critical Jewish component of their island’s identity--seeking out both their Jewish family history and their peers with Jewish ancestry. In this talk, I explore a selection of their stories.
Date: 11/05/2015
Primary URL: http://www.isca.ox.ac.uk
Primary URL Description: Home page for the sponsoring department (U of Oxford, Inst of Social and Cultural Anthropology).
Conference Name: University of Oxford, Anthropology Seminar/Institute of Social Anthropology (invited talk)

Jewish Cape Verdeans? Perspectives on a Changing Diasporic Identity (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Jewish Cape Verdeans? Perspectives on a Changing Diasporic Identity
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: In the contemporary era, many Cape Verdeans both on and off the islands are (re)discovering the Jewish history of their nation, their individual families, or both. This (re)discovery takes many forms. Some are researching the genetic foundations of their acestry by ordering readily available DNA tests. Others are using social media as well as online and other scholarly resources to research their Jewish history. Still others are undergoing full-scale conversion to the religion of their Jewish ancestors. At the micro level of the individual, what might we learn about diverse contemporary Cabo Verdeans’ complex and expanding understandings of self as we explore their process of (re)discovering new components of family history and identity? At the macro levels of regional and theoretical engagement, what might we learn about Cabo Verde once we acknowledge the deeply Jewish history of this island nation? What might this singular Sephardic historical engagement instruct us about other Sephardic experiences elsewhere in Africa? And at the broadest level, what might this Sephardic case study teach us about historical and ethnographic research methods when it comes to regional and disciplinary boundaries?
Date: 11/10/2015
Primary URL: http://www.amifarafina.com/src/media/issaj.pdf
Primary URL Description: Program for the conference.
Secondary URL: http://issaj.com/2015-2/
Secondary URL Description: Call for participation in the conference.
Conference Name: 3rd Annual International Conference on “The Surge of Judaism across Africa, the African Diaspora and Asia in the Twenty-first Century," Museum of Jewish History and Art, Paris.

Migrations between the Religious Strange and the Religious Familiar: Contemporary Cape Verdeans’ Explorations of Their Jewish Roots (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Migrations between the Religious Strange and the Religious Familiar: Contemporary Cape Verdeans’ Explorations of Their Jewish Roots
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: Since its incorporation into the expanding Portuguese empire some 550 years ago, the West African archipelago of Cape Verde has imagined itself as Catholic. Yet that hegemonic discourse conceals an important subaltern narrative. Starting with the first years of habitation on these remote islands during the 1460s, Jews arrived in significant numbers. Their motive? They fled anti-Semitism first in Portugal and Spain (from the 1492/1496 Edicts of Expulsion and the ensuing Inquisition), and later in Morocco. The Catholic Church and its legal apparatus immediately suppressed their religion, and they and their descendants married local residents steeped in Catholic as well as local (“animist”) traditions. Yet in habitus both conscious and unconscious, their descendants embodied many Jewish practices of their ancestors. These habits and rituals range from dietary and culinary preferences, to life cycle events, to values concerning education and time. Often taking these mysterious practices as a starting point, many contemporary Cape Verdeans across Europe and the US are (re)discovering the Jewish history of their nation and their individual families. What does it mean—both at the individual level and at the level of the nation--to refamiliarize oneself with a religious tradition that, until recently, appeared strange, yet was intimately familiar to one’s ancestors? Exploring the intriguing case of a religion that has moved from the familiar to the strange and back to the familiar across the span of a half-millenium, this paper analyzes both breaches and bonds in the current moment of a centuries-long, dual diaspora.
Date: 11/18/2015
Primary URL: https://aaa.confex.com/aaa/2015/webprogram/meeting.html
Primary URL Description: Schedule for the conference.
Conference Name: 114th Annual Meeting, American Anthropological Association (Denver)

Crossing Religious Borders: Jews and Cape Verdeans (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Crossing Religious Borders: Jews and Cape Verdeans
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: Soon after Portugal claimed Cape Verde for their growing empire in the mid-15th century, some Jews fleeing growing anti-Semitism in Spain and Portugal found their way to the islands. There they joined European Catholics and African animists--forging the first multi-faith, “creole” population of the modern world. In this talk, I explore the implications of this half-millenium of Jewish influence for contemporary Cape Verdeans in New England. How do Cape Verdean-Americans with Jewish ancestry understand and negotiate their remarkably mixed religious heritage?
Date: 04/19/2016
Conference Name: Invited Biennial Getlin Lecture, Trinity College (Hartford, CT)

Passover, Crioulo Style: Reflections on a Joint Seder (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Passover, Crioulo Style: Reflections on a Joint Seder
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: For decades, and in some cases centuries, Cape Verdeans suppressed discussion or even knowledge of their Jewish ancestry, often in order to avoid anti-Semitism. For a variety of reasons, in recent years many Cape Verdeans (both on and off the islands) have begun exploring their (individual and collective) Jewish heritage and developing a variety of ways to revisit their spiritually mixed identities. In this talk, I explore these links. I base my remarks on fieldwork (both formal interviews and informal participant-observation) conducted in Portugal, Cape Verde, and the U.S. Using this comparative research as a backdrop, I focus on a single ritual event: a Passover Seder held in Boston, and produced jointly for Jewish Americans, and Cape Verdeans with a spectrum of religious backgrounds. I suggest that this annual occasion (which has just enjoyed its eleventh celebration) highlights the 550+-year-long conversation that Cape Verdeans and Jews have held since the mid-15th century, and that they are now reviving and reconfiguring in the contemporary era. Drawing at theoretical levels from three decades of prior research on religion in rural, francophone West Africa (among the Beng people of Côte d’Ivoire), I approach the ritual event of the Passover Seder in Boston as an occasion allowing Cape Verdeans to variously reinforce, re-evaluate, and reconfigure their identity through personal interaction, textual reinterpretation, and symbolic performance. More broadly, combining theoretical perspectives from diaspora studies/hybridity theory on the one hand, and ritual studies/performance theory on the other hand, I argue that the notion of “African Jewry” is one whose scholarly time has come. In the context of contemporary challenges posed by migration, processes of Creolization, and the quest for racial justice, does this new attempt to combat earlier anti-Semitism, which is often embedded in internalized identities, have a space for joining the conversation?
Date: 06/25/2016
Conference Name: 2nd Annual Cape Verde Studies Conference, Pedro Pires Institute for Cape Verde Studies (Bridgewater State University), Bridgewater, MA.

Jews in/and/of Africa: New Research in Cape Verde and the Cape Verdean Diaspora (Article)
Title: Jews in/and/of Africa: New Research in Cape Verde and the Cape Verdean Diaspora
Author: AlmaGottlieb
Abstract: A brief summary of my ongoing research project on Cape Verdeans with Jewish ancestry.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: http://www.jewishculture.illinois.edu
Primary URL Description: Main website for the sponsoring university program.
Secondary URL: http://http://www.jewishculture.illinois.edu/about/newsletter/NewsletterArchive.html
Secondary URL Description: Archive of past newsletters.
Format: Other
Periodical Title: 2008-2009 Newsletter
Publisher: U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Program in Jewish Culture and Society

Religious Diversity in the Cabo Verdean Community: The (Unknown?) Jewish Connection (Article)
Title: Religious Diversity in the Cabo Verdean Community: The (Unknown?) Jewish Connection
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: A summary of findings about religious diversity in the Cape Verde Islands, which includes Jewish ancestry.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://diariocv.com/religious-diversity-cabo-verdean-community-unknown-jewish-connection/
Primary URL Description: The article was reprinted in this Cape Verdean publication online.
Secondary URL: http://www.bravanews.com/noticia/17/09/2014/religious-diversity-in-cabo-verdean-community
Secondary URL Description: The article was reprinted in this Cape Verdean publication online.
Format: Magazine
Periodical Title: Evolution Magazine
Publisher: Cultural Group

Two Visions of Africa: Reflections on Fieldwork in an "Animist Bush" and an Urban Diaspora (Book Section)
Title: Two Visions of Africa: Reflections on Fieldwork in an "Animist Bush" and an Urban Diaspora
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Editor: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: After twenty-five-plus years living among, working with, and writing about the Beng, a small, rural, “animist” community in the rain forest of Côte d’Ivoire, I recently began research in a radically different space—the European capital city of Lisbon—as the jumping-off point for a new research project with Cape Verdeans, a deeply diasporic population dispersed across Africa, Europe, and the Americas. In this chapter, I use my own case to think through broader trends and themes that characterize our disciplinary expectations for the model professional career.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo12666497.html
Primary URL Description: The publisher's page for the book.
Publisher: U of Chicago Press
Book Title: The Restless Anthropologist: New Fieldsites, New Visions
ISBN: 9780226304908

Two Visions of Africa: Reflections on Fieldwork in an ‘Animist Bush’ and an Urban Diaspora (Article)
Title: Two Visions of Africa: Reflections on Fieldwork in an ‘Animist Bush’ and an Urban Diaspora
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: In this book chapter, I chronicle the process of my decision to undertake fieldwork with the global diasporic community of Cape Verdeans.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo12666497.html
Primary URL Description: Main webpage for the book.
Secondary URL: http://www.aauw.org/2012/06/20/meet-alma-gottlieb-the-restless-anthropologist/
Secondary URL Description: Review essay about the book in which my chapter appeared.
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Mande Studies, vol. 16/17 (special double issue: “Lusophoning Mande Studies: Perspectives from Cabo Verde and Its 550-Year Diaspora,” ed. Alma Gottlieb)
Publisher: U of Chicago Press

Crossing Religious Borders: Jews and Cabo Verdeans (Article)
Title: Crossing Religious Borders: Jews and Cabo Verdeans
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: From their outpost in the North Atlantic, the inhabitants of Cabo Verde’s strategically located islands have looked beyond their shores ever since the uninhabited archipelago’s rediscovery by European mariners in 1460. Over the past five-and-a-half centuries, the Cabo Verdean diaspora has intersected with other diasporas across Africa, Europe, North America, South America, and South Asia. This early itinerant history, while well studied in broad strokes, contains one theme just beginning to be explored by scholars: its Jewish connections. In this paper, I focus on the conjoined Jewish-Cabo Verdean diaspora, exploring how this largely unknown yet historically significant dual diaspora is now being re-evaluated among contemporary Cabo Verdeans themselves (both on and off the islands). Parallel to the efforts of many contemporary Portuguese and Brazilians, many Cabo Verdeans are now curious to chart and reclaim the somewhat submerged yet historically critical Jewish component of their island’s identity. They are seeking out both their Jewish family history and their peers with Jewish ancestry. This ethnography of Cabo Verdeans with Jewish ancestry summarizes contemporary activities in which many Cabo Verdeans are now engaging in Lisbon, Praia, and New England, where they are reassessing the frequently overlooked Jewish underside to both their family histories and their national identity. The reluctance of Africanist and Jewish studies anthropologists to engage with one other is also addressed in light of the robust crossed lines of Jews and Cabo Verdeans across more than a half-millenium.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://mandestudies.org
Primary URL Description: Sponsoring organization for the journal.
Secondary URL: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/journals/journals/ms.html
Secondary URL Description: Press home page.
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Mande Studies
Publisher: U of Wisconsin Press

Lusophoning Mande Studies (Article)
Title: Lusophoning Mande Studies
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: The Cabo Verdean diaspora is, in effect, permanently evolving across time and place. Moreover, over the past five-and-a-half centuries, it has intersected with other diasporas at multiple ports of arrival and departure across five continents (Africa, Europe, North America, South America, and [South] Asia). At the same time, and perhaps even more remarkably, this insistently diasporic population nevertheless retains remarkably strong ties to family and community despite the many miles, and continents, that often separate them. Our repositioning of the production of knowledge of the African Atlantic through this lusophone lens includes several perspectives that allow us to pursue diverse themes across time and space.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://mandestudies.org
Primary URL Description: Sponsoring organization
Secondary URL: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/journals/journals/ms.html
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's home page
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Mande Studies
Publisher: U of Wisconsin Press

New Year, New Life--A (Re-)Conversion Story for Rosh Hashanah (Article)
Title: New Year, New Life--A (Re-)Conversion Story for Rosh Hashanah
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: This month, Carlos Spinola, age 52, just completed his formal conversion to conservative Judaism. The path that led him to this life-changing ceremony is a long one. Depending on how far back we want to look, we can say that it dates back to two years ago, when Carlos (along with eight others) enrolled in a weekly course for potential converts to Judaism at Temple Emanu-el in Providence, RI. In this profile, I highlight the history that led to Carlos Spinola's (re-)conversion.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: https://issuu.com/shalomma
Primary URL Description: Main website for magazine
Secondary URL: https://www.facebook.com/ShalomMagazine
Secondary URL Description: Facebook page for the magazine.
Access Model: Open access
Format: Magazine
Periodical Title: Shalom Magazine

Passover, Crioulo Style--Reflections on a Joint Sede among Cape Verdeans and Jews in Boston (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Passover, Crioulo Style--Reflections on a Joint Sede among Cape Verdeans and Jews in Boston
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Abstract: For decades, in some cases centuries, Cape Verdeans suppressed discussion or even knowledge of their Jewish ancestry -- often in order to avoid anti-Semitism. For a variety of reasons, in recent years many Cape Verdeans (both on and off the islands) have begun exploring their (individual and collective) Jewish heritage and developing a variety of ways to revisit their spiritually mixed identities. In this talk, I explore these links. I base my remarks on both formal interviews and informal participant-observation conducted in Portugal, Cape Verde, and the U.S.
Date: 06/25/16
Primary URL: http://microsites.bridgew.edu/capeverdeanstudies
Primary URL Description: Home page for the sponsoring institute.
Secondary URL: https://www.facebook.com/search/622372771225375/local_search?surface=tyah
Secondary URL Description: Facebook site for the sponsoring institute.
Conference Name: Second annual Cape Verde Studies Conference, Briddgewater State University

Women's Travels, Women's Traumas: Engendering the Cabo Verdean Diaspora (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Women's Travels, Women's Traumas: Engendering the Cabo Verdean Diaspora
Abstract: Classic work on migration by scholars across several disciplines typically assumed male migrants. More recent work acknowledges that women migrate, too-and not always with husbands or fathers. Moreover, work attentive to feminist theory explores how the experiences of female migrants might vary dramatically from those of their male counterparts. In this talk, I explore the riveting case of Cabo Verdean women migrants in the U.S. and Europe, many of whom have fled poverty, spousal abuse, maternal neglect, and other traumas in the West African nation of Cabo Verde. Emotional refugees, these women have nevertheless found varying levels of comfort, educational achievement, and even prosperity in new lands, thanks to a combination of strong social networks, more gender-egalitarian morés, government support, and educational programs. Other women left thriving lives in Cabo Verde to join their children who they had sent afar for better educational and other opportunities. In these more complicated cases, upward mobility for the children may be counterbalanced by downward mobility for their mothers. In this talk, I share a rich selection of women's voices to complicate and humanize the stories of migration that hide behind the numbers in the newspapers.
Author: Alma Gottlieb
Date: 04/20/2018
Location: National Taiwan University (Taipei, Taiwan)
Primary URL: https://www.facebook.com/ntuwrp/photos/pb.297267830383357.-2207520000.1525541111./1486439124799549/?type=3&theater
Primary URL Description: Facebook for the Women's and Gender Research Program, National Taiwan University

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