Camilla Hawthorne


PHD STUDENT
AB, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS/AFRICANA STUDIES (2009); MPA, BROWN UNIVERSITY (2010)
Diaspora, Black Europe, Science and Technology Studies

McCone 199
camilla.hawthorne@berkeley.edu

Research Interests

My dissertation, “‘There Are No Black Italians’? Race and Citizenship in the Black Mediterranean,” explores racism, national belonging, and the cultural politics of Blackness in contemporary Italy. I am specifically interested in the practices by which the Italian-born children of African immigrants engage with the question of whether it is possible to be both Black and and Italian. My work intersects with Black European studies, diaspora theory, and postcolonial/feminist science and technology studies.

My research has been supported by sources including the Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship, the UC Berkeley Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society, and the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. I am affiliated with the Mobility and Politics Emerging Scholars Research Collective as well as the SLAN.G Research Network. I am currently serving as Secretary-Treasurer of the Black Geographies Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers and sit on the international advisory board for ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. In addition to my doctoral work, I am also project manager of the Summer School on Black Europe, held each summer in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Courses Taught

Graduate Student Instructor (GSI)

    • GEOG 10 – World Peoples and Cultures / Jake Kosek (Fall 2017) – UC Berkeley
    • DS 10 – Introduction to Development / Michael Watts (Fall 2015) – UC Berkeley
    • DS 10 – Introduction to Development / Michael Watts (Fall 2014) – UC Berkeley
    • GEOG 123 – Postcolonial Geographies / Gillian Hart (Fall 2013) – UC Berkeley

Teaching Assistant (TA)

  • AFRI 1060M – African Environmental History / Nancy Jacobs (Fall 2009) – Brown University

Selected Publications and Commentary

Italians with veils and Afros: gender, beauty, and the everyday anti-racism of the daughters of immigrants in Italy” (with Annalisa Frisina). Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2017).

“Riconoscersi nel successo di Evelyne, lottare nel ricordo di Abba. Un viaggio tra le icone nere dei figli delle migrazioni in Italia” (with Annalisa Frisina). A fior di pelle. Bianchezza, nerezza, visualità, ed. Elisa Bordin and Stefano Bosco, 179-195. Verona: Ombre Corte, 2017.

In Search of Black Italia.” Transition 123 (2017): 152-174.

Making Room for Black Feminist Praxis in Geography” (with Brittany Meché). Society and Space, 29 September 2016.

Asmarina: Postcolonial Heritages.” Doppiozero, 15 May 2016.

“Sulle pratiche estetiche antirazziste delle figlie delle migrazioni” (with Annalisa Frisina). In Il Colore della nazione, ed. Gaia Giuliani, 200-214. Milan: Mondadori Education, 2015.

Italian Writer Igiaba Scego Rewrites the Black Mediterranean.” Africa is a Country, 14 October 2015.

Websites