“The Sequelae of Black Life in Brazil and the US: Violence, Gender, Space and Time” Christen Smith, Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Anthropology University of Texas at Austin
Christen Smith researches engendered anti-Black state violence and Black community responses to it in Brazil and the Americas. Her work primarily focuses on transnational anti-Black police violence, Black liberation struggles, the paradox of Black citizenship in the Americas, and the dialectic between the enjoyment of Black culture and the killing of Black people. Her book, Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence and Performance in Braziluses the lens of performance to examine the immediate and long-term impact of police violence on the Black population of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil and the grassroots movement to denounce and end this violence. Her more recent, comparative work examines the lingering, deadly impact of police violence on black women in Brazil and the U.S.
Sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Academic Affairs, Center for the Study of Women in Society, Department of Anthropology, and the UO School of Law.
by Alaí Reyes-Santos, Associate Professor, UO Department of Ethnic Studies posted in Hip Latina, October 20, 2018
“I have been asserting my blackness since I can remember.
“Growing up in the mountains of Puerto Rico, my curls —‘pelo malo,’as friends called it—betrayed my family’s attempts to claim whiteness by invoking our Spanish great grandfather. Why would my grandmother, who loved me deeply, say that my hair ‘does not come from our side of the family’?
“As we experience university responses to the Black Lives Matter Movement, Black Latinxs relive the everyday violence I faced during my childhood. Black Latinas are made invisible by intellectual and pedagogical initiatives. Data rarely documents Afro-Latino experiences in education, housing and employment, though they are similar to African American ones; AfroLatinx activists and Afro-Latinx Studies scholars seek that recognition.”
Erb Memorial Union
EMU 231 & 232
Cedar / Spruce Rooms
A CLLAS Faculty Grantee presentation by Alai Reyes-Santos (Ethnic Studies) and Ana Lara (Anthropology).
“Women’s Role in Afro-Indigenous Healing Traditions in the Caribbean and its Diasporas” is an interdisciplinary study examining Caribbean women’s roles in Afro-Indigenous healing traditions and how their healing work contributes to their empowerment in their communities. Research sites include the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and the Pacific Northwest. Professor Lara is an anthropology professor and ethnographer and Professor Reyes-Santos is a professor of ethnic studies trained in literary and cultural studies. The study draws on their methodological areas of expertise to incorporate a) analysis of cultural narratives centering Caribbean women healers and b) ethnographic research among Caribbean women healers.
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