Sophia Inman Kitlinski

Sophia Inman Kitlinski studies the visual, material, and spiritual cultures of nineteenth-century Cuba and the larger Ibero-Atlantic world. Her dissertation analyzes Afro-Cuban ritual drawing in colonial Cuba, interrogating the ways in which ritual practitioners marshalled these drawings to both bureaucratic and ritual uses. She argues that these signs’ simultaneous use in seemingly disparate contexts sheds unique light on not only the logics of ritual practice during the period, but also  entanglements of West African and European notions of authority in Cuba.

More broadly, her scholarly interests include the visual and material cultures of colonial Latin America, with a particular emphasis on New Spain.

Sophia received her B.A. in Art History and Hispanic Studies from Columbia University, where she was awarded with the Susan Huntington Vernon Prize, given to the most outstanding senior major in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures. She also holds an M.A. in Historia del Arte with mención honorífica from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.