Political Science 397BZ - ST- Race&Gender/BrazilCompPers

Fall
2019
01
3.00
Sonia Alvarez
TU TH 1:00PM 2:15PM
UMass Amherst
35148
Thompson Hall room 620
soniaa@polsci.umass.edu
Race and gender politics are deeply imbricated, constituting core dimensions of power, political subjectivities, and resistant identities. Race intersects with gender, along other vectors of power, determining individuals? and communities? rights, livelihoods, and life chances, restricting their access to cultural, political, monetary, and libidinal/sexual capital, and buttressing or undermining shifting strategies of domination and resistance. By considering the case of Brazil - which is quintessentially raced, gendered and sexualized in both the popular and scholarly imaginations (think soccer, carnival, racialized sex tourism, eroticized "mulatas," etc.) - in comparison to other racial-gender-sexual formations in the Americas, this seminar will explore the historical, political, and cultural construction of gender
and race, with particular emphasis on the experiences of Afro-descendant women. We will assess comparatively how hegemonic race and gender discourses and policies come into being and how they are challenged by anti-racist and Black feminist and queer/trans activism, both nationally and internationally. An on-going concern of the seminar will be to theorize they ways that race and gender play into current ultra-Right politics in Brazil as well as elsewhere in the Americas region and the world.
Open to Seniors, Juniors & Sophomores only.
Permission is required for interchange registration during the add/drop period only.