Dr. James Almeida
Postdoctoral Fellow (Heinz-Heinen-Fellowship)
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
May 2024–August 2024
Weber State University, US
jamesalmeida2015@gmail.com
Title of current research project: "Minting Slavery, Coining Race: Human Difference, Discipline, and Labor in Colonial Potosí"
Academic Profile
This book project, developed from my doctoral dissertation, explores the development of racial ideologies associated with forced labor practices in Potosí’s colonial mint between 1574 and 1825. Located near the world’s richest silver mine in what is today Bolivia, this institution was the site of a series of overlapping, ambiguous, and coercive labor projects that employed diverse groups of indigenous Andeans, Africans, Europeans, and their descendants. I argue that interactions between Spanish authorities and laborers of African and indigenous Andean descent produced racial categories, imbued with meaning through forced labor practices, judicial punishment, and resistance. While at the BCDSS I will focus on the dynamics of creating and reproducing communities in this mostly-male space, emphasizing worker agency and the essential, yet invisible, roles of women in the mint.
since 2023
Assistant Professor of Latin American History, Weber State University
since 2022
Freelance Editor, Edita.us
2022–2023
Visiting Assistant Professor of Latin American History, Oberlin College
2019–2021
William R. Tyler Fellow, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
2018
Research Assistant, Enslaved Biographies Project, Hutchins Center for African American Research, Harvard University
2017–2018
Teaching Fellow, Harvard University
2015
Museum Intern, Star Island Corporation
2014–2015
Graduate Assistant, Centennial Celebration Archival Project, City of Miami Beach/Wolfsonian-FIU Miami Beach
2013–2014
Teaching Assistant, Florida International University
2015–2022
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Latin American History, Harvard University
Certificate in Latin American Studies
Dissertation: "Minting Slavery in the Colonial Andes: Labor and Race in Potosí and Lima," chaired by Alejandro de la Fuente (Harvard History Department)
2013–2015
Master of Arts (MA) in History, Florida International University
2005–2009
Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) in International Business cum laude, Boise State University
Refereed Journal Articles
- 2021. "Suspicious Possession: Policing Silver and Making Race in Colonial Potosí," In Colonial Latin American Review 30(4): 545–564. Access
Refereed Book Chapters
- 2023. "The Market of Small Freedoms: Labor Negotiation in 17th-Century Potosí." In Potosí in the Global Silver Age (16th–19th Centuries), edited by Rossana Barragán R. and Paula C. Zagalsky, 210–242. Leiden: Brill.
Book Reviews
- 2022. "Review of Eleonora Poggio's Comunidad, pertenencia, extranjería: El impacto de la migración laboral y mercantil de la región del Mar del Norte en Nueva España, 1550–1640." In The Seventeenth Century 38(1). Access
- 2019. "Review of Karoline P. Cook's Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America." In The Seventeenth Century 34(1). Access
Other Publications
- 2022. "Una moneda (Bolivia y Florida, 1622)." Interview with Kate Mills and José Araneda, Las Cosas Tienen Vida podcast (May 29). Open access
- 2022. "Slavery Upstairs, Slavery Downstairs: Forced Labor in the Royal Mints of the Colonial Andes." In ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America 11(2). Open access
- 2021. With Thaïsa Way. "Land and Labor: Dumbarton Oaks Prior to 1920." In Oak News. Open access