Past Appearances

Commentary offered in the following documentaries:

We Were Here: The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe (2024) (Making of video here)

Negrita (2024) (trailer here)

Conversations Available on YouTube:

“A Century of Preserving Black Freedom: Libraries and Archives in the Tradition of Arturo Schomburg,” Conversations in Black Freedom Studies, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (01 May 2025)

“The Bounty of Black Archives,” Keynote address of CENTRO x Cumbre: Sites of Black Memory: Our Ancestors, Archives, and Arts, CENTRO, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, East Harlem, NY
(21 March 21 2025)

“Remaking the World of Arturo Schomburg,” Annual Arturo A. Schomburg Lecture and Conversation, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (24 January 2025)

“James Reese Europe: Latin Jazz Harlem Hell Fighters Band (1900-1920)” 
(26 June 2024)

“The Creative Life of San Juan Hill (1900-1960)” (6 December 2023)

“City Tutors presents Dr. Vanessa K. Valdés” (1 November 2023)

“Buscando a Juan: Panel Discussion with Ballet Hispánico and MetLiveArts” (25 September 2023)

“Part Two: In Search of Juan de Pareja: Madeleine Haddon talks to David Pullins and Vanessa K. Valdés” (25 June 2023)

“Part One: In Search of Juan de Pareja: Madeleine Haddon talks to David Pullins and Vanessa K. Valdés” (25 June 2023)

“Legacies of San Juan Hill: New York City’s Black Bohemia (1900-1920)” 
(22 June 2023)

“Left of Black: Vanessa K. Valdés hosts Mark Anthony Neal on Black Ephemera and the Crisis of the Musical Archive” (5 May 2023)

“Modern Spain and the Early Travels of Arturo Schomburg” (5 April 2023)

“Left of Black: Haiti and the Hispanic Caribbean with Vanessa K. Valdés” 
(7 April 2022)

“Blackness in Latin America and Beyond” (5 April 2022)

“Art&: Jacob Lawrence and the Afro( Hispanic) Caribbean” 
(11 February 2022)

“Translating Haiti: A Conversation with Nathan Dize and Vanessa K. Valdés” (26 February 2021)

“Arturo Schomburg at Fisk University” (16 April 2018)

“Left of Black with Vanessa K. Valdés talking Diasporic Blackness“ 
(13 April 2018)

“Worlds of Shange Panel I: From Analphabetic to Script Obsessed” 
(11 March 2013)

Talks Given at the Following Schools and Organizations: