Matthew Francis Rarey receives Travel Award

Visiting Assistant Professor Matthew Francis Rarey, recently named affiliate faculty in the UWM Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), has received a 2014 CLACS Faculty Research Travel Award. The award provide funds for Professor Rarey to travel to the National Archive of Portugal in January, where he will examine some of the few remaining “bolsas de mandinga” (Mandinka pouches) in existence. These pouches, now attached to early 18th century Portuguese inquisition records, were protective objects produced by enslaved African ritual specialists working in Brazil and Portugal, and later decreed as sorcery by the Catholic Church. They form the major case study in Professor Rarey’s current book project, which looks at these pouches as emblematic of the circulation and methodology of black Atlantic art history.