Join us for a roundtable conversation with and between queer writers from Brazil, Natalia Borges Polesso and Cidinha da Silva, and from the Middle East, Raphael Khouri and Saleem Haddad. The four writers will be in discussion with the Director of the Centre for Middle East Studies Nadje Al-Ali, and the head of the Brazil Initiative Jeremy Lehnen.
What does it mean to be a queer writer in a context of increasing authoritarianism? What spaces, both literal and figurative, have opened up and shrunk in the writers’ respective contexts? How does literature enable the writers to address questions differently/different questions than may otherwise be possible? What is the power of the literary arts in our current socio-political conjecture? Do you see yourself and your writing as part of a diaspora...a queer diaspora?
This event is part of a larger initiative between the Center for Middle East Studies and the Brazil Initiative at Brown to bring feminist and queer writers, academics, and activists into conversation.