Camilla Hawthorne
Biographic Data
| ID | 913073 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Camilla Hawthorne |
| GIVEN NAMES | Camilla |
| FAMILY NAME | Hawthorne |
| SIGNATURE | HAWTHORNE C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Santa Cruz |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9274-1321 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 270 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Introduction
The field of Black Italian studies encompasses a wide array of subfields, methodological approaches, and intellectuals. In this introduction, we advance a provisional definition, conceived not as a definitive or rigidly prescriptive formulation but rather as an opening intervention intended to stimulate further theoretical elaboration and critical engagement with this evolving field. Using an intentionally broad and porous definition that does no…
European History Quarterly Roundtable
Visitation
Memory, Forgetfulness, and Multidimensional Acts of Resistance
Mapping Black geographies
This paper unfolds in three parts. In Part 1, I describe how I have contended with the fraught relationships among mapping, nationalism, and colonialism in my teaching and research. When writing my first book, Contesting Race and Citizenship , I had to reckon with the positivist impulse to enumerate and map Black Italianness—and, more broadly, with the politics of visibility at a time of increasingly virulent racial nationalisms, xenophobia, and …
The Black Geographic
The contributors to The Black Geographic explore the theoretical innovations of Black Geographies scholarship and how it approaches Blackness as historically and spatially situated. In studies that span from Oakland to the Alabama Black Belt to Senegal to Brazil, the contributors draw on ethnography, archival records, digital humanities, literary criticism, and art to show how understanding the spatial dimensions of Black life contributes to a br…
Toward a relational theorization of racisms
As the title of Ann Morning and Marcello Maneri's new book implies, in Italy razza is commonly regarded as an “ugly word”. And while much has certainly shifted in the last decade – particularly in the realms of scholarship and cultural politics, and largely thanks to the steadfast efforts of Black Italian scholars, activists and culture workers – everyday white Italians still commonly express reservation about explicit discussions of race, even i…
Response to commentaries from the Black Mediterranean Geographies interface
Contesting Race and Citizenship
Contesting Race and Citizenship is an original study of Black politics and varieties of political mobilization in Italy. While there is extensive research on first-generation immigrants and refugees who traveled from Africa to Italy, there is little scholarship about the experiences of Black people who were born and raised in Italy. Camilla Hawthorne focuses on the ways Italians of African descent have become entangled with processes of re-defini…
Geographien des Schwarzen Mittelmeers
Black Mediterranean geographies
In this paper, I weave together insights from Black and postcolonial feminist theory and Black geographies to think through the theoretical and political provocations offered by the concept of the Black Mediterranean. First, I discuss the notion of the Black Mediterranean, and how it both draws upon and extends Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic. Then, I turn to consider how the Black Mediterranean complicates universalizing narratives that read Blackn…
Making Italy
This article, based on 16 months of in-depth interviews and participant observation conducted over five years, explores the participation of young Afro-Italian women entrepreneurs in new initiatives related to Black beauty, style, and (natural) hair care. While based primarily in northern Italy, these projects draw on economic and cultural connections to the broader Black diaspora. I argue that entrepreneurship has emerged as an important strateg…
Political Education Document
Introduction to the Book Forum
Interview with Nunu Kidane and Gerald Lenoir
Borderland Regimes and Resistance in Global Perspective
Black matters are spatial matters
Katherine McKittrick famously wrote in Demonic Grounds that "black lives are necessarily geographic, but also struggle with discourses that erase and despatialize their sense of place" (McKittrick, 2006, p. xiii). From analyses of diaspora to the plantation, from studies of urban segregation to anticolonial circuits of resistance, Black thought has long been concerned with questions of space, place, and power. Yet these interventions, which span …
A seat at the table? Reflections on Black geographies and the limits of dialogue
This commentary uses the Black Geographies Symposium, held at UC Berkeley from October 11-12, 2017, as a point of departure to discuss the political and intellectual limits of calls for dialogue. We focus specifically on the historical exclusion of Black scholars and Black thought from human geography and understand the academy as a site for the reproduction of epistemic violence against women and people of color. Calls for dialogue within the ac…
Italians with veils and Afros
This paper explores the everyday anti-racist practices of the female children of immigrants in Italy. We analyse two case studies: first, a group of Muslim young women in Italy who have publicly re-appropriated what is popularly known as ‘Islamic fashion’; and second, a group of young Afro-Italian women who meet both online and offline to share resources about the care of ‘natural’ Afro-textured hair. We argue that transnational feminist analysis…
Black matters are spatial matters
Katherine McKittrick famously wrote in Demonic Grounds that "black lives are necessarily geographic, but also struggle with discourses that erase and despatialize their sense of place" (McKittrick, 2006, p. xiii). From analyses of diaspora to the plantation, from studies of urban segregation to anticolonial circuits of resistance, Black thought has long been concerned with questions of space, place, and power. Yet these interventions, which span …
A seat at the table? Reflections on Black geographies and the limits of dialogue
This commentary uses the Black Geographies Symposium, held at UC Berkeley from October 11-12, 2017, as a point of departure to discuss the political and intellectual limits of calls for dialogue. We focus specifically on the historical exclusion of Black scholars and Black thought from human geography and understand the academy as a site for the reproduction of epistemic violence against women and people of color. Calls for dialogue within the ac…
Making Italy
This article, based on 16 months of in-depth interviews and participant observation conducted over five years, explores the participation of young Afro-Italian women entrepreneurs in new initiatives related to Black beauty, style, and (natural) hair care. While based primarily in northern Italy, these projects draw on economic and cultural connections to the broader Black diaspora. I argue that entrepreneurship has emerged as an important strateg…
Italians with veils and Afros
This paper explores the everyday anti-racist practices of the female children of immigrants in Italy. We analyse two case studies: first, a group of Muslim young women in Italy who have publicly re-appropriated what is popularly known as ‘Islamic fashion’; and second, a group of young Afro-Italian women who meet both online and offline to share resources about the care of ‘natural’ Afro-textured hair. We argue that transnational feminist analysis…
Black Mediterranean geographies
In this paper, I weave together insights from Black and postcolonial feminist theory and Black geographies to think through the theoretical and political provocations offered by the concept of the Black Mediterranean. First, I discuss the notion of the Black Mediterranean, and how it both draws upon and extends Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic. Then, I turn to consider how the Black Mediterranean complicates universalizing narratives that read Blackn…
Mapping Black geographies
This paper unfolds in three parts. In Part 1, I describe how I have contended with the fraught relationships among mapping, nationalism, and colonialism in my teaching and research. When writing my first book, Contesting Race and Citizenship , I had to reckon with the positivist impulse to enumerate and map Black Italianness—and, more broadly, with the politics of visibility at a time of increasingly virulent racial nationalisms, xenophobia, and …
A seat at the table? Reflections on Black geographies and the limits of dialogue
This commentary uses the Black Geographies Symposium, held at UC Berkeley from October 11-12, 2017, as a point of departure to discuss the political and intellectual limits of calls for dialogue. We focus specifically on the historical exclusion of Black scholars and Black thought from human geography and understand the academy as a site for the reproduction of epistemic violence against women and people of color. Calls for dialogue within the ac…
Italians with veils and Afros
This paper explores the everyday anti-racist practices of the female children of immigrants in Italy. We analyse two case studies: first, a group of Muslim young women in Italy who have publicly re-appropriated what is popularly known as ‘Islamic fashion’; and second, a group of young Afro-Italian women who meet both online and offline to share resources about the care of ‘natural’ Afro-textured hair. We argue that transnational feminist analysis…
Black matters are spatial matters
Katherine McKittrick famously wrote in Demonic Grounds that "black lives are necessarily geographic, but also struggle with discourses that erase and despatialize their sense of place" (McKittrick, 2006, p. xiii). From analyses of diaspora to the plantation, from studies of urban segregation to anticolonial circuits of resistance, Black thought has long been concerned with questions of space, place, and power. Yet these interventions, which span …
Making Italy
This article, based on 16 months of in-depth interviews and participant observation conducted over five years, explores the participation of young Afro-Italian women entrepreneurs in new initiatives related to Black beauty, style, and (natural) hair care. While based primarily in northern Italy, these projects draw on economic and cultural connections to the broader Black diaspora. I argue that entrepreneurship has emerged as an important strateg…
Political Education Document
Introduction to the Book Forum
Interview with Nunu Kidane and Gerald Lenoir
Borderland Regimes and Resistance in Global Perspective
Contesting Race and Citizenship
Contesting Race and Citizenship is an original study of Black politics and varieties of political mobilization in Italy. While there is extensive research on first-generation immigrants and refugees who traveled from Africa to Italy, there is little scholarship about the experiences of Black people who were born and raised in Italy. Camilla Hawthorne focuses on the ways Italians of African descent have become entangled with processes of re-defini…
Geographien des Schwarzen Mittelmeers
Black Mediterranean geographies
In this paper, I weave together insights from Black and postcolonial feminist theory and Black geographies to think through the theoretical and political provocations offered by the concept of the Black Mediterranean. First, I discuss the notion of the Black Mediterranean, and how it both draws upon and extends Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic. Then, I turn to consider how the Black Mediterranean complicates universalizing narratives that read Blackn…
The Black Geographic
The contributors to The Black Geographic explore the theoretical innovations of Black Geographies scholarship and how it approaches Blackness as historically and spatially situated. In studies that span from Oakland to the Alabama Black Belt to Senegal to Brazil, the contributors draw on ethnography, archival records, digital humanities, literary criticism, and art to show how understanding the spatial dimensions of Black life contributes to a br…
Toward a relational theorization of racisms
As the title of Ann Morning and Marcello Maneri's new book implies, in Italy razza is commonly regarded as an “ugly word”. And while much has certainly shifted in the last decade – particularly in the realms of scholarship and cultural politics, and largely thanks to the steadfast efforts of Black Italian scholars, activists and culture workers – everyday white Italians still commonly express reservation about explicit discussions of race, even i…
Response to commentaries from the Black Mediterranean Geographies interface
Memory, Forgetfulness, and Multidimensional Acts of Resistance
Mapping Black geographies
This paper unfolds in three parts. In Part 1, I describe how I have contended with the fraught relationships among mapping, nationalism, and colonialism in my teaching and research. When writing my first book, Contesting Race and Citizenship , I had to reckon with the positivist impulse to enumerate and map Black Italianness—and, more broadly, with the politics of visibility at a time of increasingly virulent racial nationalisms, xenophobia, and …
Introduction
The field of Black Italian studies encompasses a wide array of subfields, methodological approaches, and intellectuals. In this introduction, we advance a provisional definition, conceived not as a definitive or rigidly prescriptive formulation but rather as an opening intervention intended to stimulate further theoretical elaboration and critical engagement with this evolving field. Using an intentionally broad and porous definition that does no…
European History Quarterly Roundtable
Visitation
Political science (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Politics (7 works) · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society (6 works) · History (5 works) · Anarchism and Radical Politics (4 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Law (4 works)