Christen Smith

This course explores race/gender/sexuality, violence and everyday life in Brazil. Brazil’s history has been characterized by moments of violent encounter, from colonization, to slavery, to clashes between police and residents across Brazil’s major cities today. These violent encounters have been, in many ways, racialized, gendered and sexualized. This class investigates the race/gender/sexuality aspects of multiple forms of violence in Brazil, and how this violence creates, defines and maintains social hierarchies in the nation. Throughout the course we will think through the question “what is violence?” as we discuss the concept’s physical, structural and symbolic forms. The course pays particular attention to the politics of blackness and the unique relationship black Brazilians have to the nation-state. We will also discuss the politics of writing and theorizing violence when doing social analysis, and the precarious balance between defining and addressing issues of violence, and glorifying it.

Core Texts

~ Nancy ScheperHughes, Death Without Weeping (selected Chapters)

~Theresa Caldeira, City ot VVaiIs (selected chapters)

~ Donna Goldstein, Laughter out of Piace (selected chapters) ~Robin Sheriff, Dreaming Equality (selected Chapters)

~Caldweli, Kia, Negras in Brazil: Reenvisioning Black Women, Citizenship, And the Politics of identity (selected chapters) ~De Jesus, Carolina Marie et al., The Unedited Diaries oi Caroline Maria de Jesus (seiected Chapters)

Supplemental Texts

~Michael Hanonard ed., Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil (selected Chapters)

~Gonzalez, Leila` “The Unified Black Movement: A New State in Black Political Mobilization” in Race, Class and Power in Brazil, ed. Pierre-Michel Fontaine

~Policing Rio de Janeiro: Repression and Resistance in a lQtn-oentury City. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. (selected chapters)

~Chevigny, Paul Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas (selected chapters)

~Michael Mitchell and Charles VVood, “lronies ot Citizenship: Skin Color, Police Brutality, and the Challenge to Democracy in Brazil.” Social Forces

~Arendt, Hannah “Reflections on Violence"

Booth, Wayne C, et al. The Craft of Research (guide to writing research papers selected Chapters).

This course explores race/gender/sexuality, violence and everyday life in Brazil. Brazil’s history has been characterized by moments of violent encounter, from colonization, to slavery, to clashes between police and residents across Brazil’s major cities today. These violent encounters have been, in many ways, racialized, gendered and sexualized. This class investigates the race/gender/sexuality aspects of multiple forms of violence in Brazil, and how this violence creates, defines and maintains social hierarchies in the nation. Throughout the course we will think through the question “what is violence?” as we discuss the concept’s physical, structural and symbolic forms. The course pays particular attention to the politics of blackness and the unique relationship black Brazilians have to the nation-state. We will also discuss the politics of writing and theorizing violence when doing social analysis, and the precarious balance between defining and addressing issues of violence, and glorifying it.

Objectives: 1) To think critically about violence not only as a physical encounter, but a multilayered phenomenon that manifests itself in different ways; 2) To consider how race functions in Brazil and what violence has to do with it; 3) To better understand the politics of discussing and writing about race and violence particularly within the field of anthropology.

Key topics: Colonization, slavery, blackness, whiteness, racial democracy, urban conflict, police repression, death, gender, sexuality, urban cleansing/gentrification, land conflict, imprisonment, symbolic violence, structural violence, physical violence, genocide.

This course is an exploration of African American culture that provides students with analytical tools to critically examine and consciously participate in the ongoing construction of African American culture.  Particular attention is given to key terms such as race, culture, Blackness, hegemony, aesthetics, and politics.  Emphasis is placed on Black agency as demonstrated through the social, political, and representational choices made by African Americans.

This course is an exploration of African American culture that provides students with analytical tools to critically examine and consciously participate in the ongoing construction of African American culture.  Particular attention is given to key terms such as race, culture, Blackness, hegemony, aesthetics, and politics.  Emphasis is placed on Black agency as demonstrated through the social, political, and representational choices made by African Americans.