[VIRTUAL] “Genesis of Blackness in the Americas: Santo Domingo, A Passport to Black Caribbean Culture and Identity” with Dr. Lissette Acosta Corniel

Date: September 23, 2025

Time: 6pm-7pm

Cost: FREE!

Registration Required? Yes, register here!

Location: Virtual via Zoom

Twice a year, Dyckman Farmhouse Museum hosts Talking About Race Matters (TARM), a FREE three-part virtual lecture series where notable community leaders and esteemed scholars share their groundbreaking research on cultural history, racial identity, and social justice. Each TARM series is grounded in a unifying theme. For this September-October (Happy Hispanic Heritage Month!), all three TARM lectures will explore the history and formation of Afro-Caribbean identity.

Join us for the first session of Talking About Race Matters 2025 featuring Dr. Lissette Acosta Corniel, an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies in the Department of Ethnic and Race Studies at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.

She will be presenting “Genesis of Blackness in the Americas: Santo Domingo, A Passport to Black Caribbean Culture and Identity,” a conversation about the first Black people to arrive in the Caribbean and how Santo Domingo (or La Española) played a key role as the main port of entry for the Transatlantic Slave Trade, leading to one of the largest diasporic Black communities and each with a distinct sense of belonging through adaptation, identity preservation, and identity development.

Dr, Lissette Acosta Corniel’s work focuses on gender, slavery, and resistance in early colonial Hispaniola and Santo Domingo. She has published several articles and book chapters and is the editor of the book Transatlantic Bondage: Slavery and Freedom in Spain, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Rico (SUNY Press, 2024). She is working on her next book, Bad Women, Contested Freedoms: Feminist Behavior in 16th Century Hispaniola. Acosta Corniel is also interested in digital humanities. She was the research associate of the www.firstblacks.org database and is the co-creator and co-director of the faculty-student research program Black Studies Across the Americas. https://openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu/black-studies-across-the-americas/.

Dyckman Farmhouse Museum’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Talking about Race Matters is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.