Ana Paulina Lee
Ana Paulina Lee is Associate Professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University. A scholar, writer, and digital media producer, her work focuses on cultural histories of migration, climate, and diaspora, with a focus on Asian and African diasporas in Latin America and Portuguese Asia and Africa. She is the author of Mandarin Brazil: Race, Representation, and Memory (Stanford University Press) winner of the 2019 Antonio Candido Prize for Best Book in the Humanities. Her second book, Coding Witchcraft: Race, Religion, and Public Health in Modern Brazil examines witchcraft trials that were prosecuted during the first half of the twentieth century in Rio de Janeiro (forthcoming).
Professor Lee co-directs the working group, Geographies of Injustice, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Social Difference, the Center for Spatial Research, and the Social Sciences Research Council. This working group examines historical formations of race and caste in Iberian Asia and Africa.
Her podcasts and documentary projects include, Memória e Saberes, made in collaboration with Ilê Omolu e Oxum candomblé terreiro in Rio de Janeiro. This project consists of oral history interviews with Candomblé leadership of Ilê Omolu Oxum Temple in Rio de Janeiro to reconstruct the life of their ancestor Iyá Marcolina, and how she maintained ties to Candomblé religion and Yoruba language during slavery and its aftermath. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8CCnnqZJmA
The podcast Memória e Migração, made in collaboration with the Sankofa Memory and History Museum in Rocinha and Observatório de Favelas in the Maré Complex, in Rio de Janeiro, features oral history interviews of artists and musicians who live in Latin America’s largest favela. They discuss the challenges of artistic production in the context of global south migration and rapid urbanization. https://radiobatuta.ims.com.br/podcasts/musica-e-migracao
Lee co-led the pilot program to conduct life history testimonies of 12 survivors of the Nanking Massacre. The collection has since expanded to 102 life history testimonies, making it the world’s fullest account of the war told from the perspective of survivors. This project was done under the auspices of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute and Nanking Massacre Memorial Hall, Nanjing, China. https://sfi.usc.edu/collections/nanjing-massacre
Professor Lee takes an interdisciplinary, global, and local approach to researching and teaching. She has conducted research and study on Latin American Performance and Politics with the Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya in Chiapas, Mexico and the Yuyachkani Theater Collective in Lima, Peru. Lee has published non-fiction narratives, research articles, essays, and translations in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, The Drama Review, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures, The Blackwell Companion to Luis Buñuel, The Global Studies Journal, e-misférica, and Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World. Lee's research has received the support of numerous grants, including the Social Sciences Research Council, Mellon, Fulbright, and the Fundação Luso-Americana.