XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Brazilian Studies of Whiteness – Part 1: Whiteness and Brazilian Social Thought, Class, Families, and Affect

Session Submission Type: Complete Panel

Abstract

The field of whiteness studies in Brazil has developed significantly over the last two decades. Responding to the call that Afro-Brazilian intellectuals have made, since the 1950s, to turn Brazilian whites and Brazilian forms of whiteness into objects of study, this burgeoning scholarship is now becoming increasingly nuanced and multifaceted. Our 2-part panel on Brazilian Studies of Whiteness seeks to build on and contribute to this field. The first panel examines whiteness in the contexts of Brazilian social thought, class relations, families, and affect. The topics analyzed in this panel include the pioneering contributions of Afro-Brazilian intellectuals for the study of whiteness, middle-class parenting and the enactment of racial violence for the protection of white lives, the new-found process of “becoming white” and recognizing one’s racial privilege, and the relationship between political generations and racializing affect in contemporary Brazil. The second panel focuses on the intersections between whiteness and mobilities. Recognizing that movements across space are deeply unequal, and examining both how mobility is racially informed and how differential mobilities inform the construction of racial identities, the production of racial processes, and the representation of racialized spaces, the papers in this panel examine whiteness and mobilities at the different scales of bodily, national, and transnational movements and in the various contexts of dance, tourism, and study abroad programs.

Sub Unit

• XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Individual Presentations

• A Ideia de Branquitude e Antirracismo no Pensamento Social Brasileiro - Mário Augusto Medeiros da Silva, UNICAMP - State University of Campinas

• From Mestiço to White: Refashioning Racial Identity in Contemporary Brazil - Laura Rose Brylowski, The University of Texas at Austin

• “Watching over” Whiteness: The Racial Logics of Intensive Parenting in a Context of Anti-Black State Violence - Jennifer Roth-Gordon, Associate Professor, School of Anthropology

• Political Generations and Racializing Affects: Whiteness in a Decade of Political Upheaval in Brazil (2013-2023) - Kaio Lacet, University of California, Santa Cruz

Chair

• Jennifer Roth-Gordon, Associate Professor, School of Anthropology

Moderator

• Mauro Porto, Tulane University

Session Organizer

• Patricia Pinho, University of California, Santa Cruz