Yuko Miki

Academic Year 2026-2027
Mark Claster Mamolen Fellow
Yuko Miki turning and smiling at the photographer against a turquoise background

Yuko Miki is Professor of History and Latin American and Latinx Studies at Fordham University. She is an historian of slavery in Brazil and the Atlantic World. Her award-winning book, Frontiers of Citizenship: A Black and Indigenous History of Postcolonial Brazil has been translated into Portuguese.

Kalunga: The Last Slave Ship to Brazil

Yuko Miki’s fellowship project is Kalunga: The Last Slave Ship. Spanning four continents over 170 years, Kalunga follows the trail of the last slave ship to Brazil—the world’s largest slave society—and Miki’s tenacious fight to tell the stories of the Africans aboard. This quest leads from 1850s Boston and New York City to Lisbon, Angola, and the Amazon forest today where Miki meets the survivors' descendants, revealing how a tale that began in death becomes a luminous story of life.