About

What would happen to our societies if, due to a natural catastrophe, a mutating virus or a radically new drug, the hormone levels, bodies and behaviours conditioned by western patriarchy and heterocisnormativity suddenly changed? Would we be able to think and construct other kinds of gender roles, sexual identities, in short, another kind of society? These and other questions are raised by some Spanish-American women authors who tell stories of empowered women, lesbians and trans people in a science fiction setting to imagine different societies in hypothetical futures. Among these works are the novels El país de las mujeres (2010) by Gioconda Belli, La mucama de Omicunlé (2015) by Rita Indiana, and the short story "Boreales" (2012) by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro. This seminar proposes an analysis and interpretation of these works by establishing a dialogue with the book Staying with the Trouble (2016) by Donna J. Haraway, in which the author defines SF not only as science fiction, but also as science fact, speculative fabulation and speculative feminism. To what extent these Southern literatures contribute to a Northern-dominated literary genre and to a reflection on the future of humanity on planet earth will be questioned.

Bio note
Doris Wieser: Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, responsible for the area of African Literatures of Portuguese Language. She is a member of the Centre for Portuguese Literature of the same institution, where she coordinates the project "National Identities in Dialogue. Constructions of political and literary identities in Portugal, Angola and Mozambique (1961-present)" (IF/00654/2015). She holds a PhD in Ibero-Romanic Literatures from the University of Göttingen (Germany) with a thesis on the Latin American detective novel/crime novel at the turn of the millennium (published in 2012). Her research interests revolve around the construction of collective identities and memories, the detective novel and gender studies in Latin American and African Portuguese-speaking literatures.
 

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This activity will be accessible through the Zoom platform and will be limited to number of available places:

https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/85968810695?pwd=cXFqc0dKKzVhdWZSUEM2R1RxaHFrZz09
ID da reunião: 859 6881 0695 | Senha de acesso: 606000

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