James Sweet
Associate Professor

eMail: jhsweet@wisc.edu
Phone: (608)265-2523
Office: 5213 Mosse Humanities
Mailbox: 5012 Mosse Humanities

Curriculum Vitae: View PDF

Office Hours: TBA

Education: PhD: The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York; MA: University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; BA: University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Bio Sketch:

My specializations are African Diaspora and Brazil.

My Research and Teaching Interests center on Africans and their descendants in the broader world. I teach courses on comparative slavery, race and nation in the Atlantic world, comparative world history, and the history of Brazil. To date, my research has focused on the cultural connections between Africa (especially Angola) and the early colonial slave communities of Brazil. My current project is an examination of the eighteenth-century Portuguese-Atlantic world as seen through the lens of an enslaved, and then freed, man who traveled from Nigeria, to Brazil, and finally to Portugal. Future projects will focus on Jamaica and South Africa, particularly the impacts of gender, labor, religion, and race in the forging of “modern” nation states.

Selected Publications:

• Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
• “Manumission in Rio de Janeiro, 1749-1754: An African Perspective,” Slavery and Abolition 24 (2003): 54-70.
• “The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought,” William and Mary Quarterly LIV (1997): 143-166.
  

Courses Taught:

Lecture Courses:

• History 525 - World & The West from 1492
• History 533 - Multi-Racial Societies in Latin America
• History 555 - History of Brazil

Undergraduate Seminars:

• History 200 - Historical Studies
• History 225 - Explorations in 3rd World History - Topics: "AfroAtlantic History 1808-Present"
• History 600 - Advanced Seminar in History - Topics: "African Diaspora Peoples and History"; "African Images in the West"

Graduate Courses:

• History 751 - Pro-seminar in History of Africa
• History 861 - Seminar in History of Africa - Topics: "African Diaspora Peoples and History"
• History 982 - Seminar in Latin American Area - Topics: "African Diaspora Peoples and History"