Kim Butler

Kim D. Butler, Associate Professor, received her Ph.D. in History from Johns Hopkins University in 1995, and holds M.A.s in History from Johns Hopkins and Howard Universities. She is a historian specializing in African diaspora studies with a focus on Brazil and Latin America/Caribbean. Two of her courses, "Afro-Atlantic Diaspora" and "Afro-Brazilian History" engage students with diaspora studies directly. Dr. Butler also brings her training in material and oral history, and her curating experience at the Smithsonian Institution, to a special course in Advanced Methodologies for Africana Studies Research.  She is the Director of the Graduate Certificate in Africana Studies, and is also a member of the graduate faculty in History. Professor Butler is the author of Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition Sao Paulo and Salvador, winner of the Wesley-Logan Prize in African Diaspora History from the American Historical Association, and the Letitia Woods Brown Publication Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians. She was twice awarded the Fulbright Fellowship.  From 2011-2015, she served as President of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD).  Butler has published numerous articles on Afro-Brazilian history and, more recently, diaspora theory. Her current work applies advances in diaspora studies to new interpretations of African diaspora history. Her most recent book, Diásporas Imaginadas, is a collaborative project placing African diaspora theory in dialogue with Afro-Brazilian history.

Publications:

• Diásporas Imaginarias: Atlántico Negro e Histórias Afro-Brasileiras   (with Petrônio Domingues).  São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, 2020. 

• “Carnival, Culture and Black Citizenship in Post-Abolition Bahia,” in Scott Ickes and Berndt Reiter, eds. The Making of Brazil’s Black Mecca: Bahia Reconsidered. MSU Press, 2018. (view)

• “Masquerading Africa in the Carnival of Salvador Bahia, Brazil, 1895-1905,”African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 10:2 (2017), 203-227.    (view)

Insurgent Intersections: Combating Global Anti-Blackness is a multi-year project of the Department of Africana Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick exploring how the discipline informs global, intersectional struggles against anti-Blackness. We are also examining how the interventions of Africana Studies intersect with approaches to anti-Blackness from other academic disciplines. Given the failure of current interventions to address anti-Blackness, and racism in general, it is vital that we shift our focus to the insights, priorities, and strategies that come from the lived experiences of those most directly affected. That knowledge comes not only from the academy, but also the work of activists, artists, and everyday community members. Insurgent Intersections places these voices in dialogue to inform a new way forward towards social justice.

Learn more about Insurgent Intersections. 

Professor Kim D. Butler (Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History at Rutgers New-Brunswick, and Project Director of Insurgent Intersections: Combating Global Anti-Blackness, one of the first funded research projects at the ISGRJ) has been named a 2025 recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to complete a book on Black Power as it expressed itself through Black carnival groups known as Blocos Afros.

Blocos Afros are a distinct form of carnival performance created in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil during the nation’s last military dictatorship (1964-1985) when a group of young people founded Ilê Aiyê (loosely, “House of the World” in Yoruba). In the carnival of 1975, this exclusively Black group scandalized a society that asserted itself as a racial democracy, parading with signs proclaiming “Black World,” “Blacks for You” and (in English) “Black Power.” Dozens of others soon followed; these were neighborhood-based groups promoting black cultural pride, history, and politics during their Carnival processions, and providing social services throughout the year through youth activities and economic opportunities. At their height of popularity in the 1980s, they featured percussion sections sometimes over 100 strong. Hundreds of masqueraders paraded in African-themed costumes and sang original compositions about black experience. Elected queens of the blocos floated above the crowd on flatbed trucks dancing movements created especially for this style of Carnival. Made internationally famous by such artists as Michael Jackson and Paul Simon, blocos became an integral part of Carnival, the state’s cultural identity, and tourism. 

Read more: https://clas.rutgers.edu/news-and-events/news-and-announcements/news-details/1258-kim-d-butler-receives-the-2025-national-endowment-for-the-humanities-fellowship