July Fourth got us thinking: what does “independence” look like for American-controlled territories? To explore that question, we’re re-running an episode from the archives with Professor Kaysha Corinealdi, where she and Jonathan discuss the political history and legacy of the US-controlled Panama Canal Zone. And all week on our @CuriouswithJVN social media pages, we’ll be highlighting episodes from our archives that interrogate the idea of “freedom” in the US and abroad.

Kaysha Corinealdi is an interdisciplinary historian of modern empires, migration, gender, and activism in the Americas. Her forthcoming book Panama in Black, available for preorder now, centers the activism of Afro-Caribbean migrants and their descendants as they navigated practices and policies of anti-Blackness, xenophobia, denationalization, and white supremacy in Panama and the United States.

Her research can also be found in Black Perspectives (September 14, 2021), Caribbean Review of Gender Studies (Issue 12, 2018), the International Journal of Africana Studies (18:2, Fall-Winter 2017), and the Global South (6:2, Fall 2013).

You can follow Professor Corinealdi on Twitter @KCorinealdi, and read more of her work here and on her website.

Join the conversation, and find out what former guests are up to, by following us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN.

Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook.

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

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Our executive producer is Erica Getto. Our associate producer is Zahra Crim. Our editor is Andrew Carson.

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