Crypto-Jews of New Mexico and Cape Verde: Long-Lost Cousins?

Alma Gottlieb, speaker Professor Emerita, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Visiting Scholar in Anthropology, Brown University

In recent years, formerly crypto-Jews of New Mexico (and elsewhere) have, in different ways, embraced their families’ long-hidden identities. While the basic outlines of their stories are now known, many secrets remain. Among the most intriguing is a little-known connection to the West African island nation of Cape Verde. Since 2006, Dr. Alma Gottlieb has been studying the lives of Cape Verdeans with Jewish ancestry who now live in a global diaspora. In this talk, she will explore how the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions produced surprising Afro-Jewish histories that link New Mexico to West Africa.

Dr. Alma Gottlieb is a cultural anthropologist who began conducting research in West Africa in 1979. She holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Virginia. The former president of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology and a former Guggenheim Fellow, she has pioneered creative approaches to ethnographic writing and helped forge the anthropology of menstruation and of infancy. The author of nine books (three, award-winning) and dozens of articles, she is currently completing Africa across the Seder Table: Conversations about Jewish Identity in Cape Verde and Its Diaspora. Dr. Gottlieb is a professor emerita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a visiting scholar in Anthropology at Brown University. She divides her time between Santa Fe and Providence, Rhode Island.

Host or Publisher School for Advanced Research