Desmond Fonseca

/in /by
Desmond Fonseca

Desmond Fonseca

Graduate Student

Email: dfonseca@g.ucla.edu

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Biography

My dissertation focuses on the history of the PAIGC in the decolonization of Cape Verde and the party’s place in the global revolutionary era of anti-imperialism during the Cold War. My interests revolve around the intellectual biography of Amilcar Cabral, the praxis of pan-Africanism, the international socialist movement, and the class politics/background of the PAIGC’s leadership as both liberation movement and ruling party.

Subfield

Atlantic Field

Awards & Grants

  • West African Research Association, Pre-Doctoral Fellowship
  • Modern Endangered Archives Project, Planning Grant
  • UC-Cuba Fellowship
  • UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship Grant
  • UCLA Graduate Summer Research Program Grant (2x)
  • UCLA Competitive Edge Fellow
  • Schomburg-Mellon Summer Humanities Fellow

Conference Presentations

  • “The Weapon of Solidarity: Cuba, Cabo Verde, and the Pan-African Atlantic,” January 6th 2024, American Historical Association, San Francisco
  • “Cabralism in Clandestinity: Cape Verde and the Underground PAIGC Struggle against
    Portuguese Colonialism,” December 1, 2023, African Studies Association, San Francisco
  • “Imperialism Will Die:’ Amiri Baraka, Amilcar Cabral and the Poetics/Politics of Anti-
    Imperialism across the Atlantic,” November 30, 2023, African Studies Association, San Francisco
  • “Cuba, Cape Verde and the Pan-African Atlantic,” February 3, 2023, UC-Cuba Graduate Student Conference, University of California, Irvine
  • “Bush Mama Blues: Anti-Colonial Care and Pan-African Revolution in Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga,” May 14, 2021, Institute for Research in Women’s and Gender Studies, Radical Care Conference, Columbia University
  • “A Return to the Source, Toward the New Man: Amilcar Cabral, Culture, and Anti-Imperialism,” April 24, 2021, Rupture and Continuity: UCLA Graduate Conference in Political Theory
  • “On the Right Side of the World Revolution: Local Movements and Global Visions,” panelist, January 22, 2020, MLK Symposium, Tufts University
  • “Looking for Moses: Angola in the Black Radical Imagination,” October, 2019, Graduate Conference of African American History, University of Memphis.
  • “A Luta Continua, Para Sempre: 1970s Angola, Black Radicalism and Diasporic Solidarity,”  June 18, 2019, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Advisor(s)

Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley

Degrees

  • M.A., History, University of California, Los Angeles
  • B.A., History and Africana Studies, Tufts University