Events

In this presentation, Dr. Saunders will address the epistemological interventions of three Black queer Bahian artivists’ via their performance and aesthetic interventions into theories of liberation via the discourse of monstrosity, performativity and Afrofuturism. They will offer some reflections on Black Brazilian queer artivist rejection of the concept of “the human,” which is central to their decolonial praxis, in which they combine Afro-Futurism and Monstrosity, both utopian frameworks, to develop epistemological frameworks which they use to challenge the coloniality of power, and Brazilian necropolitics. 

Dr. Tanya L. Saunders is an Associate Professor at the Center for Latin American Studies and the Center for Gender, Sexualities and Women's Studies at the University of Florida. She is interested in the ways in which the African Diaspora, throughout the Americas use the arts as a central tool for social change. As a 2011-2012 Fulbright scholar to Brazil they began work on their current project which analyzes urban arts-based social movements and grassroots-based urban alternative education movements in Brazil. Dr. Saunders holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Master of International Development Policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.