Please join us to learn about the research from Taylor Smith & Simone Calvacante Da Silva Simone

Simone Cavalcante Da Silva Simone is an educator and researcher originally from Rio de Janeiro, with an academic and professional background shaped by her experiences in Brazil, the U.S., and Europe. Besides a M.A. and doctoral coursework in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from the University of Illinois, she is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Nonprofit Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania. Simone has volunteered with immigrant and refugee communities in Portugal, taught Portuguese in a juvenile detention center in Lawrence, Kansas, and supports lesbians of color in Rio de Janeiro through Casa Resistências-Maré. She also serves on the board of Clube Safo, an LBTQ+ nonprofit in Lisbon. 

Title: Glocalizing lesbian experiences and promoting community building in LBTQ+ organizations in Brazil and Portugal

This presentation explores how the concept of glocalization can be tailored to accommodate the unique experiences and perspectives of lesbians in the Global South. It highlights the initiatives of two nonprofit organizations, Associação Clube Safo in Lisbon, Portugal a national grassroots organization and Casa Resistências- Maré in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil a local grassroots organization that advocate for the lives of lesbians of color*. By examining these dynamics, we can better understand how global and local factors intersect to shape the experiences of lesbians in both countries, as they strive for inclusivity and equality.

Taylor L. Smith is a fourth-year doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Smith holds an African & African-American Studies degree from Washington University in St. Louis. Her work explores Black girls and women’s unique contributions to Black textual and visual literacies with specific attention to aesthetic, memory, and archival construction. Additionally, she investigates how long-standing Black communal practices of memory-making and information diffusion adapt to the possibilities of new digital media. Her work has been supported by the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, the Social Science Research Council, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Digital Culture and Society (CDCS).

Title: The Black Feminist Genealogy of Affect

Critical theory has been in the midst of an "affective turn" for nearly three decades, depending on where one places affect theory's origin. In many ways, affect theory has been positioned as a corrective to critical theory as it prioritizes the possibility of feeling. While that rhetoric is helpful in that it emphasizes the fluidity that characterizes the study, taking the study of affect seriously requires not only intentional analysis of its present configurations and a concerted effort to orient towards a future, but also a look at its origins with a critical eye. Building on the African tradition of Sankofa, which means to "go back and get it," this analysis seeks to respond to Collins-White and Nash's (2022) call to center the unique contributions of Black feminist thinkers in the study of affect and its theorizations by placing more canonical texts like the works of Sara Ahmed, Brian Massuni, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Silvan Tomkins in conversation with their less affectively engaged, though equally as critical, Black feminist foremothers and contemporaries. In doing so, I do not intend to reject the canonical configurations of affect's genealogy, which scholars like Donovan Schaefer (2019) have pointed out are multiple in nature. Instead in the vein of affect scholar Brian Massumi, my "desired result is a systematic openness," an openness made possible through situating traditionally accepted strands of affect theory alongside "established concepts from other humanistic and analogous disciplines like "communications, literary theory, cultural studies, and so on" (2021, p. 20). For me, that "so on," is Black feminist theory, which I argue is a necessary complement, and genealogical strand for affect theory.