The History Department is excited to announce the publication of a major collection of primary documents on feminism in the Dominican Republic. Edited by a team of scholars including Pomona's own April Mayes the two-volume collection is called . It promises to make an important contribution to the study of women and feminism in Latin America. Tomás Summers Sandoval, this year's department chair, sat down with Professor Mayes to talk to her about her work.
Tomás Summers Sandoval (TSS): Congratulations on the new book! Can you tell us a little bit about it?
April Mayes (AM): Thank you! The book is really a labor of love and also a demonstration of my and my colleagues' commitments as feminist scholars to collaborate, and to help feminist studies and gender studies in Dominican history evolve and grow. This two-volume, over 1,000-page work is a collection of primary documents that traces the history of feminism in the Dominican Republic. We begin our collection in 1865 and end it in 1965. We begin in 1865 to show that feminism was not imported from abroad but emerged at a time of extraordinary nation-building. We end the book in 1965 to give an accounting of what became feminine activism during General Rafael Trujillo's dictatorship, from 1930-1961, feminist resistance against the dictatorship, and women's mobilization in the chaotic period after Trujillo's assassination, which also witnessed a civil war in which the United States intervened in April of 1965.
TSS: This must be filling a big void in Latin American Studies.
AM: Well, yes, I hope so! When it comes to feminism in Latin America, there remains some discomfort with the topic because feminism is so often associated with the United States and the U.S. imposing its values on Latin American peoples. And while it's true that feminists in the Dominican Republic corresponded with their counterparts in the U.S.--such as Margaret Sanger and Doris Stevens, for example--they were also involved in a pro-women's movement that linked them with like-minded people throughout Latin America, including Haiti, and the Iberian Peninsula. Our book shows that Latin American feminism, at least in the Caribbean, was homegrown and, here's the kicker: feminism provided a theory of state that challenged militaristic, hyper-masculine, patriarchal politics steeped in violence. Feminists demanded a that the state place women and children at the center of its development.
TSS: Can you tell us a little bit about how the project came about?
AM: So, in 2011, and with funding from the Public Affairs Section of the United States Embassy in Santo Domingo, I co-organized a seminar to bring together those of us who were working on gender in Dominican history based in the U.S. with our counterparts in the Dominican Republic. My co-organizer and I, Esther Hernández, Ph.D, invited historians, feminist activists, and politicians to discuss both scholarship and current feminist mobilization in the D.R. During our conversations, Dominican participants asked us repeatedly about where and how we collected the documents that we analyzed because the U.S. scholars had a treasure trove of documents that our counterparts in the D.R. had not even seen. One important feminist activist, Magaly Pineda, who just recently died, asked us to collect our materials and publish them so that Dominican feminists could access them. After the seminar, Ginetta Candelario (Smith College) and I began to bring our materials together and then brought in Elizabeth Manley (Xavier University) to continue the project. It took us five years to complete.
TSS: It's always challenging to get these projects done while teaching and fulfilling our other administrative duties. I can imagine the kind of travel involved and the collaboration with others presented other challenges, too. Can you tell us a little bit about how you all got the work done?
AM: This project would not have been possible without support from Â鶹ӰÊÓ, especially the SURP program. Thanks to SURPS, two history majors--Saraà Jimenez '14, and Jessica Peña '15--and an LAS/Spanish major--Jennifer Miner '15--worked on this project, collecting, scanning, transcribing, and reviewing documents in the Dominican National Archives. It also helped that Ginetta, Elizabeth, and I work well together and are good friends. We were also brought together because we are feminists who understand projects like these as not only intellectual work, but also activist work.
TSS: You're on sabbatical this academic year. What will you be working on while you're away?
AM: Probably too many things! I have personal and professional objectives for my sabbatical. Right away, I have to write a book chapter about black feminist activism in contemporary Dominican Republic. I’ve also been invited to give a talk about Pomona's cohort mentoring programs and I'll give a paper in Haiti at the Haitian Studies Association meeting in November. In the spring, I will be in Haiti and France, and then in Spain to conduct archival research. I'm currently working with colleagues to give talks in Norway and Denmark. By next summer, I hope to return to the Dominican Republic with my children.
Thank you for this opportunity to share my work with you!
Professor April J. Mayes is an associate professor of History and Latin American Studies at Â鶹ӰÊÓ. A graduate of Â鶹ӰÊÓ, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. She's the author of (University Press Florida, 2015) and the newly published . A winner of the Wig Distinguished Professor Award (2015), she will be on leave during the 2016-2017 academic year.