Jean Muteba Rahier

 

rahierEDUCATION

Ph.D.   in Sociology, Université de Paris X, Nanterre,  France June 1994  
                             

Graduated with the Mention (Honors): Très Honorable (“Very Honorable”).

(My advisor was an anthropologist who taught in the Department of Sociology)

License en Sciences Sociales (Anthropology track),  Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium July 1985

Graduated with Honors.

 

Dr. Rahier’s Policy regarding recommendation Letters, copyediting of thesis and applications, and signing of documents

Due to research, teaching, academic and administrative obligations, and the sheer volume of requests for recommendation letters, thesis and application copyediting, and document signing, please allow sufficient time for the processing of your specific requests.  Please provide at least 4 weeks’ notice for recommendation letters and thesis or application copyediting, and one week’s notice for document signing.  There is NO guarantee that you will have your requests processed in time for your respective deadlines, if this policy is not adhered to.

 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Jean Muteba Rahier received his Ph.D. from the Université de Paris X, in Nanterre, France .  He came to FIU in August 1998 from Louisiana State University (LSU), where he taught for 6 years in the Department of Geography & Anthropology.  At FIU, he has been an Associate Professor of Anthropology and African-New World Studies (ANWS) and has served as ANWS Graduate Program Director, ANWS Acting Director, and Department of Sociology & Anthropology Graduate Program Director.  He has been appointed Director of ANWS in July 2008.  ANWS became the African and African Diaspora Studies (AADS) in August 2008.

 

He is the author of La Décima: Poesía Oral Negra del Ecuador (Quito, Ecuador: Abya-Yala, 1987) and the editor of Representations of Blackness and the Performance of Identities (Westport: Bergin & Garvey, 1999).  He also edited with Percy Hintzen Problematizing Blackness: Self-Ethnographies by Black Immigrants to the United States (Routledge, 2003). He has authored a series of articles and book chapters, and has published in the American Anthropologist, the Journal of Latin American Anthropology, Current Anthropology, Research in African Literatures, Estudos Afro-Asiáticos, Cadernos de Antropologia e Imagem, Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, Íconos, etc.  He is fluent in French, Spanish, and Portuguese and was, from January 2002 until the summer 2007, the Editor of the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology [link: www.fiu.edu/~jlaa]: the peer-reviewed journal of the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (within the American Anthropological Association).  He is completing revisions to a book manuscript on the Afro-Esmeraldian Festival of the Kings in Ecuador , which is forthcoming at the University of Illinois Press.  The same press is also considering for publication a volume he has co-edited with Percy Hintzen and Felipe Smith entitled Global Circuits of Blackness: Race, Space, Citizenship, and Modern Subjectivities.

 

Although he is mostly known for his work on the African diaspora in Latin America, and mostly in the Andean region, his next projects focus on the diversity of black subjectivities in South Florida, and on inter-racial intimacy in the Belgian Congo.  The latter pays careful attention to the intersections of race, power, and sexuality in the context of Belgian colonization of the Congo , and involves both interviews and archival work.

 

COURSES TAUGHT

  • Representations of Africa and Africans in Films
  • The African Diaspora: Anthropological Perspectives
  • Diasporas, Migration, and Globalization
  • African and African Diaspora Studies Theory
  • Sex, Race, and Power in Colonial Times

SELECT AWARDS AND HONORS

From July 2001 to August 2007         Member of the International Editorial Advisory Board of the Bulletin of Latin American Research.

 

August 4th – 15th, 2003           Invited Faculty of the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar’s (UASB) Doctoral Program in Latin American Cultural Studies (Quito, Ecuador).  30 hours Course taught: Ordenes Raciales, Espaciales y Sexuales. 

 

Co-P.I. of the Ford Foundation Grant, “Intersection of African Diaspora Knowledge Communities: the South Florida Model,” awarded to FIU’s African-New World Studies Program on July 8, 2003.  Amount of the grant: $350,000.00 over three years (2003-2006).  My section of the grant (which represents around $63,000.00 per year, is for the development of an International Graduate Summer Seminar entitled “Interrogating the African Diaspora.”  (See the website at http://www.fiu.edu/~interad).

 

November 12 & 13, 2002       Invited Instructor for the workshop Analisis de Discurso organized by the GTZ project Salud Sexual y Reproductiva in San Salvador, El Salvador .

 

October 18 & 19, 2002           Co-Instructor for the mini-course Sons e Imagens do Atlântico Negro organized by the Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais (CEAO) da Universidade Federal da Bahia, in Salvador, Brazil.

 

July 15, 2001 through July 19, 2001  Instructor in the graduate ethnic and racial studies course entitled Fábrica de Ideas (“the Idea Factory”), organized by the Centro de Estudos Afro-Asiaticos of the Candido Mendes University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

 

July 17, 2000 through July 21, 2000  Instructor in the graduate ethnic and racial studies course entitled Fábrica de Ideas (“the Idea Factory”), organized by the Centro de Estudos Afro-Asiaticos of the Candido Mendes University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

 

April-May 1998          Invited scholar in residence in the 1997 – 1998 Northwestern University Institute for Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities, to participate in the Seminar “Identity Constructions: Performing and Writing the African Diaspora, 1880-2000.”  Paper presented: “Re-Presentations of Blackness in the Afro-Esmeraldian Festival of the Kings, Ecuador .”  Additional lecture given: “Presence of Blackness and Representations of Jewishness in the Afro-Esmeraldian Celebrations of the Semana Santa (Ecuador).”

 

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

Books

Rahier, Jean Muteba, Percy Hintzen, and Felipe Smith (Editors)

In Press  Global Circuits of Blackness: Interrogating the African Diaspora. Urbana-Champaign: The University of Illinois Press.

 

Rahier, Jean Muteba

Forthcoming    Playful African Diasporic Performances of Race and Gender: The Afro-Esmeraldian Festival of Kings, Ecuador.  Urbana-Champaign: The University of Illinois Press.

 

Hintzen, Percy and Jean Muteba Rahier (Editors)

2003    Problematizing Blackness: Self Ethnographies by Black Immigrants to the United States, New York and London: Routledge.

 

Rahier, Jean Muteba (Editor)

1999    Representations of Blackness and the Performance of Identities, Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey (Greenwood Press).

 

Rahier, Jean

1987    La Décima: Poesía Oral Negra del Ecuador, Quito: Abya-Yala and Centro Cultural Afro-Ecuatoriano.

 

Articles and book chapters

 

Hintzen, Percy and Jean Muteba Rahier

Forthcoming    “Theorizing the African Diaspora: Metaphor, Miscognition, and Self-Recognition.” In Global Circuits of Blackness: Interrogating the African Diaspora, J.M. Rahier, P.C. Hintzen, and F. Smith (Editors).  Urbana-Champaign: The University of Illinois Press.

 

Rahier, Jean Muteba

Forthcoming    “The Ecuadorian Victories in the 2006 FIFA World Cup and the Ideological Biology of (Non-)Citizenship.” In Global Circuits of Blackness: Interrogating the African Diaspora, J.M. Rahier, P.C. Hintzen, and F. Smith (Editors).  Urbana-Champaign: The University of Illinois Press.

 

Rahier, Jean Muteba

 

2009    “Race, Fútbol, and the Ecuadorian Nation: the Ideological Biology of (Non-)Citizenship.” In Imaginaire racial et projections identitaires. Edited by Victorien Lavou Zoungbo and Marlène Marty. Perpignan, France: Presses Universitaires de Perpignan: 201-222.

 

2008    “Creolization And African Diaspora Cultures: The Case Of The Afro-Esmeraldian Decimas.” In The Ecuador Reader: History, Nation, and Politics, Edited by Carlos de la Torre and Steve Striffler, Durham and London: Duke University Press: 226-236.

 

2008    Fútbol and the (Tri-)Color of the Ecuadorian Nation: Ideological and Visual (Dis-)Continuities of Black Otherness from Monocultural Mestizaje to Multiculturalism.  Visual Anthropology Review 24(2) Fall: 148-182.

 

2008    Race, Fútbol, and the Ecuadorian Nation: El Mundial 2006 and the Ideological Biology of (Non-)Citizenship.  E-misférica, Performance and Politics in the Americas 5(2). December: 1-20.

 

2008    El Mundial de Fútbol 2006 y la Selección Ecuatoriana: Discurso de Alteridad en la Internet y en la Prensa.  Discurso y Sociedad. Revista Multidisciplinaria de Internet.  Volumen 2, número 3. Julio: 609-641. http://www.dissoc.org/ediciones/

 

2008   “National Identity and the First Black Miss Ecuador (1995-1996).” In The Ecuador Reader: History, Nation, and Politics, Edited by Carlos de la Torre and Steve Striffler, Durham and London: Duke University Press: 341-349.

 

2003    “Racist Stereotypes and the Embodiment of Blackness: Some Narratives of Female Sexuality in Quito, Ecuador .” In Millenial Ecuador : Critical Essays on Cultural Transformations and Social Dynamics. Edited by Norman Whitten, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press: 296-324.

 

2003    “Poetics and Politics of Black and White Bodies: Señoras, Mujeres, Blanqueamiento and Miss Esmeraldas 1997-1998.” In Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies, edited by Carole Boyce Davies, with M. Gadsby, C. Peterson, and H. Williams, Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 257-268.

 

 2003   “Métis/Mulâtre, Mulato, Mulatto, Negro, Moreno, Mundele Kaki, Black, …: The Wanderings and Meanderings of Identities.” In Problematizing Blackness: Self-Ethnographies by Black Immigrants to the United States , Edited by P. Hintzen and J.M. Rahier, New York, London: Routledge, 85-112.

 

Hintzen, Percy Claude and Jean Muteba Rahier

 

2003    “From Structural Politics to the Politics of Deconstruction: Self-Ethnographies Problematizing Blackness.” In Problematizing Blackness: Self-Ethnographies by Black Immigrants to the United States , Edited by P. Hintzen and J.M. Rahier, New York, London: Routledge, 1-20.

 

Rahier, Jean Muteba

 

2003    “Lugares de identidad y representaciones: lo negro en la fiesta afro-esmeraldeña de los reyes, Ecuador”, in Ritualidades latinoamericanas : un acercamiento interdisciplinario / Ritualidades latino-americanas : uma aproximação interdisciplinar, Editado por Martín Lienhard, Frankfurt-Madrid: Vervuert-Iberoamericana: 169-193.

 

2003    “Mestizaje, Mulataje, and Mestiçagem in Latin American Ideologies of National Identities,” Journal of Latin American Anthropology, Vol. 8 (1); 40-51.

 

2003    “The Ghost of Leopold II: the Belgian Royal Museum of Central Africa and Its Dusty Colonialist Exhibition” Research in African Literature, Volume 34, Nº1 (Spring): 58-84.

 

2001    "Mãe, o que será que o negro quer?" Representações racistas na Revista Vistazo, 1957-1991. Estudos Afro-Asiáticos, ano 23, no.1 pp. 1-24.

 

2001    “(U.S-Centered) Afrocentric Imaginations of Africa: L.H. Clegg’s ‘When Black Men Ruled the World’ and Eddie Murphy’s ‘Coming to America ’” In Images of Africa: Stereotypes and Realities, Daniel Mengara (Ed.), Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 261-277.

 

2001    “Lugares de identidad y representaciones: lo negro en la fiesta de los Reyes en el Ecuador” , (con traducción al español de María Teresa Ortega Sastrique), Conjunto (Cuba), n° 120, enero-marzo: pp. 70-81

 

2001    “Blanqueamiento en Esmeraldas: Señoras, Mujeres y Concursos de Belleza,” in Diversidad: ¿sinónimo de discriminación? Patricio Benalcázar y Mara Judith Ed., Quito: Fundación Regional de Asesoría en Derechos Humanos (INREDH): 219-240.

 

December 1999          “Body Politics in Black and White: Señoras, Mujeres, Blanqueamiento and Miss Esmeraldas 1997-1998, Ecuador ,” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, vol. 11:1, issue 21: 103-119

 

Rahier, Jean Muteba and Michael Hawkins

 

1999    ‘“Gone with the Wind’ versus the Holocaust Metaphor: Louisiana Plantation Narratives in Black and White,” in Plantation Society and Race Relations: The Origins of Inequality, edited by Thomas J. Durant, Jr. and J. David Knottnerus.  Westport, CT: Praeger: Pp. 205-220.

 

Rahier, Jean Muteba

 

1999    “Blackness as a Process of Creolization: the Afro-Esmeraldian Décimas (Ecuador),” in The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities, edited by Isidore Okpewho, Carole Boyce-Davies and Ali Mazrui, Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 290-314.

 

1999    “Presence of Blackness and Representations of Jewishness in the Afro-Esmeraldian Celebrations of the Semana Santa (Ecuador),” in Representations of Blackness and the Performance of Identities, edited by Jean Muteba Rahier, Westport, CT: Bergin&Garvey (Greenwood Press): 19-47

 

1999    “Representaciones de gente negra en la revista Vistazo,” Íconos (Revista de FLACSO-Ecuador), n° 7 , abril: 96-105.

 

1998    “Blackness, the ‘racial’/spatial order, migrations, and Miss Ecuador 1995-1996,”
American Anthropologist, vol. 100, n. 2, June: 421-430.

 

CONTACT INFORMATION

jrahier@fiu.edu

University Park LC 308
(305) 348 6860

Department of  Global and Sociocultural Studies

http://www.fiu.edu/~socant/