PLAS Graduate Workshop | Santiago Conti (HIS) & Catarina Lins Oliveira (SPO)

Let No One Hear Us – a Queer Reading of Ana Cristina Cesar’s Archive

PRESENTER
Catarina Lins Oliveira, Ph.D. Candidate, Spanish and Portuguese

Ana Cristina Cesar is likely the first name that comes to mind when thinking of a Brazilian woman poet from the 1970s and ’80s. Although many theses and dissertations have already examined her oeuvre, my work focuses on an aspect that academic scholarship has tended to overlook: the poet’s queerness. By analyzing Cesar’s letters and poetry, this presentation situates her work within the broader context of the homosexual movements in Brazil and the United States. Additionally, by paying attention to how the poet engages with sound, I propose that Cesar, although not explicitly an activist in the homosexual movement, created a queer form which, in turn, contributes to the crafting of a queer future.

DISCUSSANT
Rafael Cesar, Assistant Professor, Spanish and Portuguese

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The herds of Mandure. Economic transformations and shifting power relations in the Guarani missions. 1768-1810.

PRESENTER
Santiago Conti, Ph.D. Candidate, History

In 1800 the viceroy of the Rio de la Plata, Marqués de Avilés, abolished the communal system that organized the economic life in the Guarani missions. With this decision, Avilés was trying to end with a long period of socio-economic crisis of the Guarani missions that started after the expulsion of the Jesuit and prolonged until the nineteenth century. Historians that studied this economic crisis focused primarily on demographics, production, trade and the institutional architecture that organized the economic life of the missions. These valuable studies, however, have not approached the consequences of economic transformations over the power relations inside the missions. In this article I argue that: 1) structural transformations modified the relationship between Guarani authorities and commoners, weakening the first; 2) the consequences of the economic transformations were unequal over Guarani population and with regional variability; 3) these transformations led to a process of social differentiation inside the missions that had no place before the expulsion of the Jesuits.

DISCUSSANT
Miqueias Mugge, Academic Research Manager, PIIRS

MODERATOR
Dylan Blau Edelstein, Ph.D. Candidate, Spanish and Portuguese; PLAS Graduate Fellow

This event is open to students, faculty, visiting scholars and staff.

Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.