Prof. Renée Soulodre-La France
Department
of History | King's University College at the University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario N6A 2M3
Canada
(519) 433-3491 | e-mail
My
own work fits neatly into the parameters of the Identities Group as
well as the theorectical framework of complexity in the Baroque
Atlantic. I am pursuing ongoing research dealing with African cultural
practices such as music production in colonial Colombia, always within
the context of inter-ethnic relations. My current project focuses upon
cofradías in Nueva Granada as transnational corporate institutions
through which cultural and religious identites were shaped in the 17th
and 18th centuries. Religious brotherhoods created by Africans and
their descendents provided an intriguing opportunity for the
transection of ethnicity and cultural diversity and the creation and
re-creation of cultural practices. This research is still at an
incipient stage and involves travelling to various municipalities
throughout Colombia as I seek the documentation that will permit me to
understand the historical dynamics represented through these ambiguous
institutions. The historical literature in Colombia has focused much
more directly on those brotherhoods created and maintained by Europeans
and Indigenous groups. A comparison of these cofradias to those founded
by Africans will deepen our understanding of local religious practice
and belief systems and the ways in which African and Indigenous groups
shaped the dominant cultural matrix in specific colonial settings. The
challenges of this approach are that many of these documents are housed
in church archives and thus access is sometimes difficult. As well, in
many cases there is a lamentable paucity of documents, especially
compared to places such as Cuba and Brazil.