Staging race: Blackness, performance, and citizenship in Afro-Latin American writers (1940-2000)

Suarez Ontaneda, Juan

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Description

Title

Staging race: Blackness, performance, and citizenship in Afro-Latin American writers (1940-2000)

Author(s)

Suarez Ontaneda, Juan

Issue Date

2020-05-01

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Meléndez, Mariselle

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Meléndez, Mariselle

Committee Member(s)

• Goldman, Dara
• Ledesma, Eduardo
• Hertzman, Marc
• Solis, Gabriel

Department of Study

Spanish and Portuguese

Discipline

Spanish

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Afro-Latin American Writers
• Black Performance
• Afro-Latin American Public Sphere
• Racial Debates in Latin America

Abstract

This dissertation project investigates the body as a medium of racial representation by looking at five Afro-Latin American artists in Brazil, Peru, and Colombia between 1940-2000. In conversation with performance studies and critical race studies, my project analyzes the emergence of an Afro-Latin American public sphere through distinct yet interconnected forms of art and activism. In particular, my study focuses on Abdias do Nascimento’s experimental theater, Nicomedes Santa Cruz’s radio broadcasting, Victoria Santa Cruz’s choreographies, Delia Zapata Olivella’s dance manuals, and Manuel Zapata Olivella’s street theater. In doing so, my research underlines how their respective performances created a vocabulary to enunciate everyday experiences of racism and discrimination in the region. I argue these artists used performances to reinvent discourses on blackness, cultural memory, and the meaning of democracy in multiracial societies.

Graduation Semester

2020-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/108289

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2020 Juan Suarez Ontaneda

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