Anani Dzidzienyo 1941-2020
The BRASA community mourns the passing of Anani Dzidzienyo, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, at Brown University. A beloved professor, mentor, and friend to so many, Anani was the 2020 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for which the following citation was written:
Professor Dzidzienyo’s work exemplifies the true meaning of this award, which honors someone with outstanding scholarly achievement and significant contributions to the promotion of Brazilian studies in the United States. His research, teaching and mentorship were instrumental to bringing the study of race to the center of Brazilian Studies, and his labors central to the founding of the field of Afro-Latin American Studies.
A native of Takoradi, Ghana, Professor Dzidzienyo received his B.A. in Political Science from Williams College and completed his graduate studies at the University of Essex in Latin American Politics and Government. He then spent three years as a research fellow at the International Race Studies Program at the Institute of Race Relations in London, during which time he also began teaching at Brown University, where he has served as a professor for over four decades. Dzidzienyo’s pathbreaking scholarship provoked Brazilian Studies to put Afro-descendants, and the afterlives of slavery, at the center of the field. At the same time, his approach also pushed the field to embed the study of Brazil in the study of the world, on both sides of the Atlantic. Both of these critical contributions can be found throughout his interdisciplinary, multilingual and transnational body of work. His brilliant and pioneering research is only matched by the monumental impact he has had on the field through his direct and indirect mentorship of generations of Brazilianists in the United States, and Brazilians. As his nominators noted “it would take at least two hands to count the books published by those he has taught”. Indeed, in the acknowledgements of these works, one easily finds Anani Dzidzienyo, the generous mentor and thoughtful interlocutor. The committee felt that Dzidzienyo’s nomination could not have come at a better time. His service, teaching, and research has always been informed by his deep commitment as a public intellectual. When he first began writing about race in Brazil in the 1970s – he was surveilled by the Military Dictatorship. He also lent his sharp analysis and critical eye to the policy arena, writing reports for human rights organizations and foundations. As his nominators noted, his first publication was the 1971 report “The Positions of Blacks in Brazilian Society”, written for the Minority Rights Group, and remains widely influential some 50 years later. Professor Dzidzienyo’s work reminds us to ask urgent and timely questions, to write and teach topics that may be unpopular, and to ultimately have a politics.
Please see this tribute to Anani Dzidzienyo from the Chair of Africana Studies at Brown University:https://mailchi.mp/e9a0b3266a93/in-memoriam-anani-dzidzienyo-2211345?e=09283b2bd5
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