Name: Estela Gonçalves de Souza
Year in program: 4
ABD Y/N: Y
Primary supervisor: Dr. Peter Beattie
Major field: Latin America
Minor fields: Race, gender, slavery, emancipation, post-abolition, Black masculinities, 19th and early 20th centuries – Brazil
I am a doctoral candidate in the History Department, certified in Chicano/Latino Studies and Women and Gender Studies. I hold my BA and MA in History from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Brazil. My research focuses on Black Masculinities in the Brazilian pre- and post-emancipation eras, with a special focus on the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. In the broad implication, historicizing Black masculinities in Brazil’s post-emancipation will help to understand the complexity of the current political-racial project that operates in the elevated rates of violence against Black male subjects, along with racialized-gendered domination. Thus, this research explores how white privilege disadvantaged Brazilians of color during the transition from slave to a free labor regime, a problem that continues to this day. As Brazil has the largest global population of Black subjects, save for Nigeria, it is fundamental that this work is debated in a predominantly diasporic space. Estela is an oral historian by training and is currently engaged in two projects at Michigan State University that discuss race, gender, diasporic relations, and memory.