Christen Smith, “The Sequelae of Black Life in Brazil and the US: Violence, Gender, Space and Time”

Knight Library, Browsing Room
1501 Kincaid St.

Race, Ethnicities, and Inequalities Colloquium

“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.

Tags: anti-Black police violence, Brazilian Studies, Christen Smith, UO