Time: 12:00 pm- 1:00 pm
Venue: 206 Ingraham Hall
Abstract:
Based on my ongoing investigation, this talk examines the multiple possibilities of research that emerge when delving into the personal archive of Mário Pinto de Andrade, a cosmopolitan African intellectual and a key figure in the cultural and political history of Angola. The talk considers how the personal records gathered by de Andrade throughout his life contribute to unveiling different facets of his rich experience as a researcher, anticolonial militant, diplomat, editor of African literature, etc. At the same time, it also questions the creative dimensions of the archive and its role in generating new narratives about Angola’s recent history.
Bio:
Elisa Scaraggi is a Marie Skłowdowska Curie fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History at NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities in Lisbon.
She received her PhD in Comparative Studies (2020) from the University of Lisbon, with a thesis in which she explored the entanglement between personal and collective experiences in the diaries of an Angolan writer imprisoned by the colonial regime.
Her current research focuses on the personal archive of Angolan intellectual Mário Pinto de Andrade as a key to uncover new narratives on Angola’s recent past and the relation between culture and nationalism.