On March 21st, Dr. Ali Asgar Alibhai presented the lecture, “Mending Fragments of Time: How the Lives of Jewish Merchants Shape Our Understanding of the Medieval Islamic World,” where he discussed how the discovery of a variety of rare maps, documents, and manuscripts from the medieval period illuminates Islamic and Jewish social, cultural and historical aspects.

Dr. Alibhai began by discussing the Book of Curiosities, a detailed 11th-century manuscript containing rare color schematic maps that do not exist anywhere else in the world. He remarked that these maps are both intriguing and unique for their non-eurocentric, apolitical, and non-religious perspective views of the world at the time. Dr. Alibhai discussed some of the map depictions in detail, calling attention to the extensive geographies of trade networks, and highlighting major trade routes of mercantile operations that represent the importance of both trade and travel to a medieval understanding of the world.

In the 19th century, researchers discovered over 300,000 loose-leaf medieval papers, comprised of various documents including legal, educational, prose-poetry, and both Islamic and Jewish scriptural texts that provide further information regarding everyday lives and interactions of medieval society. These varying manuscripts contain minute details about the cultural, social, political, and other aspects of the period that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.

Dr. Alibhai concluded by emphasizing that in essence, what these maps and various other documents provide is a broader understanding of the medieval Islamic and Jewish world through a lens focused on trade, travel, and economic variables. He highlighted that “mending fragments of time” illustrates how different perspectives of understanding emerge from exploring these rare artifacts, and that viewing them as the individual components that are part of a much larger contextual frame offers a chance to perceive medieval Islamic and Jewish culture through a lens of material culture.

On March 24th, the Ackerman Center hosted its Annual Race Workshop. This year, Dr. Pedro Gonzalez Corona organized and moderated a panel discussion between Dr. Jose Espericueta, University of Dallas, and Dr. Mónica Moreno Figueroa, University of Cambridge. The participants examined the history and present-day implications of anti-black racism in Mexico. The panel emphasized the importance of the history of racialized perceptions in Mexico, bringing epistemological origins and corresponding social and cultural implications to the forefront of the conversation.

Dr. Gonzalez opened the discussion by exploring the meanings of the terms “Mestizaje,” “Mestiza,” or “Mestizo” in Mexican culture. He explained that this label refers to a racialized conception of identity in Mexican culture based upon a national narrative that idealizes ancient cultures, especially those originating between the mixing of the Spanish and indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Dr. Gonzalez argued that studying racialized perceptions encourages further thought about how such ideas are conveyed through mediums of popular culture and how they resonate in the collective consciousness. He illustrated how racialized depictions of black Afro-Mexican descendants have been portrayed in advertising campaigns, popular literature, and other media. The image on the top right is from the advertising campaign promoted by a popular snack company, and the images below show two comic book covers with characters that have exaggerated cartoonish stereotypical features that typify the racialized conception of “blackness” in Mexican culture.

Dr. Jose Espericueta called attention to the roles that stereotyped images play in popular culture, emphasizing how deeply embedded such ideas have become in the cultural consciousness of Mexicans. Dr. Espericueta’s research focuses on processes of identity construction and explores the various aspects of “cultural navigation,” highlighting the fluidity of such systems, and exploring the various components involved. He points out that theories of race are a relatively recent concept that emerged in the 19th century, and that these are invented categories of identity. However, these notions of race are actively engaged in questions of Mexican self-identity, and it is important to avoid the tendency to think about the perception of Mestizaje using simple binaries of racial understanding.

Dr. Espericueta stressed that these nationalizing narratives profess unity, but in actuality, they suppress the cultural differences of indigenous peoples. The conceptualization of Mestizaje changes over time, noting that it is especially important to question the “legitimizing” authorities that establish, utilize, and propagate racialized perceptions from which these discourses arise. In turn, this legitimacy is the means by which questions of humanity, as well as universal notions of civilization and civilized people and behaviors, are defined. In the same manner, legitimacy also creates the mechanisms of justification by which the treatment and view of the “other” are conceived.

Dr. Mónica Moreno Figueroa described the conception of the Mestizaje as multifaceted but stressed the role of the nation-building process in Mexico as the central component that stems from a historical process of colonialization and colonial conquests. She argued that racism in Mexico differs from other global contexts as a racialized national conception that is based upon a process of assimilationist thinking that is used to promote a particular vision of identity in which Mexicans are defined as a homogenous population.

In terms of identity construction, Dr. Moreno Figueroa locates anti-black racism within the context of Mestizaje as a linking together of ideas that purport the unity and homogeneity of the population in the public consciousness. However, hidden beneath the pretense of inclusion, these “equalizing processes” have actually served to propagate mythological racialized perceptions. She stressed that in such discourses “indigenous” is used as a reductive term simplifying that all indigenous peoples can be reduced to this idealized notion of racialized identity.

Dr. Moreno Figueroa argued that it is important how these racialized ideas are reproduced in the present and continue to perpetuate these longstanding myths in cultural consciousnesses that stem from larger historical origins have a direct relation to the way that the “Other” is viewed and treated as different. She concluded by emphasizing the importance of breaking down these mythological racial conceptions embedded in the collective understanding, pointing out that presently, there is still a general refusal to acknowledge the existence of anti-black racism in Mexico.

Visit our website to learn more about previous race workshops.

Dr. Kerner presented the first of our Spring Lecture Series, which you can see a recording of by clicking here.

We hope that you can join us for the next two lectures of our annual Spring Lecture Series. You can find more information regarding each lecture and register for these and other events by visiting our events webpage.

The Ackerman Center began commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah, in 2016 by having students, staff, faculty, and members of the community recite poems in various languages. Please check the event's webpage for highlights from previous years. This year’s event will once again be held virtually but in two parts:

The Ackerman Center will be hosting its traditional commemorative event with speakers and readers from around the globe, as well as the premiere of a video created specifically for this event.

If interested in participating by reading a poem or prose excerpt in any language, please contact cynthia.rogers@utdallas.edu.

Season 2 of the Ackerman Center Podcast began at the end of January. Each episode will focus on a specific event of the early years of the Third Reich.

Each episode has corresponding primary source documents, which can be viewed by clicking on the episode names below:

Ackerman Center Podcast Episodes: Season 2:

Jan. 31: 1933 | The Reichstag Fire and the Enabling Act

March 14: 1934 | Hitler and Mussolini Meet in Venice

Mar. 24: 1935 | Nuremberg Laws

April 25: 1936 | The Olympics in Berlin

*May 30:1937 | The Pacific War: The Rape of Nanking
-and- 1938 | Eichmann and the “Office of Jewish Emigration”

All past and future episodes are available for streaming on the podcast's website and other streaming platforms.

*Note: the season finale on May 30th will have two episodes.