Southwest Center Spring Lecture Series
When
Thursday, February 15, 3.30 pm
Free event, no reservation needed - Mediterranean/Moroccan refreshments will be served
Kiva Room - Student Union Memorial Center, University of Arizona Campus
Kiva Room Location Directions
The Southwest Center 2024 Spring Lecture Series launches with Dr. Hsain Ilahiane's account of one of the most fascinating, and least understood, men in the history of the American Southwest: the Moroccan “slave” known as Estevan de Dorantes in sixteenth century Spanish accounts of New Spain. Estevan was one of the four survivors of the Pánfilo de Narváez Expedition, which sailed from Spain in 1527, with the objective of conquering Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. The survivors were stranded on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and soon captured by Native Americans. After eight years of adversity, the expedition members escaped and traveled west, across western Texas, through the southwestern borderlands, and arrived in Culiacán, Mexico, in the spring of 1536. Three years later, Estevan led the first Spanish expedition to Zuni lands and was the first Moroccan, African, and non-Native American to set foot in present-day Arizona and New Mexico.
Despite Estevan’s role in Spain’s age of exploration and imperialism in the Americas, historical accounts are silent about him except to note that he was a slave who accompanied Fray Marcos De Niza on his travels through the American Southwest. In his presentation, Dr. Ilahiane provides a re-reading of Spanish accounts of New Spain and Medieval Moroccan historical documents to better understand Estevan's status and the circumstances that led him to join the Spaniards in their expedition to the Americas in the sixteenth century, and why he still remains a mere footnote in history.
Hsain Ilahiane (Ph.D., University of Arizona) is an applied cultural anthropologist and professor at the School of Middle Eastern & North African Studies and the W.A. Franke Honors College. Hsain's areas of theoretical interest include development, poverty, globalization, applied anthropology, economic anthropology, and political ecology. His most recent book is The Mobile Phone Revolution in Morocco: Economic and Cultural Transformations (Lexington Books, 2022), and he joined the University of Arizona in 2023 after serving as the department head of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures at Mississippi State University.
The event is co-sponsored by the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies and its Arabic Flagship Program, the W.A. Franke Honors College, the School of Anthropology, the Department of American Indian Studies, African American Students Affairs, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.