Speaker: Leonora Souza Paula, Black Feminist Imagination in Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Women Narratives

This presentation will discuss the role of Black Brazilian women narratives in creating a space of intervention in the imaginary of Brazilian society. The creative labor of these writers suspends the normalization of social-historical processes that situate Black Women and Afro-Brazilians in general, in the space of subalternity. Their narratives recover and center marginalized histories, epistemologies and practices as a way to redress deep-seated racist representations of Black lives and lived experiences in contemporary Brazil.

Leonora Souza Paula is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Michigan State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California San Diego, an M.A. in Literary Studies and a B.A. in English from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Her research examines the intersections of race, gender and spatial representations in contemporary Afro-Brazilian and Latin American literature and culture.