Rebecca Atencio
Associate Professor - Spanish and Portuguese
- South America
Biography
My research specialty is late twentieth and twenty-first century Brazilian literature, cinema, and television with a focus on human rights and feminisms. My book Memory’s Turn (Critical Human Rights series, University of Wisconsin, 2014) sought to theorize the synergies between certain cultural works (including films, memoirs, TV miniseries and telenovelas, novels, and theatrical plays) and the institutional measures implemented by the State to reckon with the military-civilian dictatorship that governed the country for twenty-one years. It received a best book award from SECOLAS and honorable mention by the Brazilian Studies Association. While writing the book I also created and oversaw the blog Transitional Justice in Brazil maintained by Tulane undergraduate and graduate research assistants between 2012 and 2014.
While I continue to write about memory politics in Brazil, my research has increasingly focused questions of gender and sexuality. I am currently working on a project that traces the trajectory of Brazilian feminisms (in the plural) from the final years of the dictatorship up to presidency of Jair Bolsonaro. Some of my recent and current shorter projects meld these two areas of interest, such as my article in Current History exploring the relationship of human rights memory to Brazil’s 2018 elections and the mobilization of women in the #EleNão movement, as well as an essay, forthcoming in an edited volume on military memory in Latin America, that undertakes a feminist analysis of how military memoirs about the Brazilian military-civilian dictatorship have intervened in memory debates from mid 1980s to the current Bolsonaro administration. I’m currently working on a feminist rereading of the initial boom of autobiographical writings by Leftwing militants and revolutionaries, and article (with Fernanda Sanglard) analyzing the recent right turn in Brazilian memory politics, as well as an essay on documentary films about sexual violence in the wake of Brazil’s Primavera Feminista.
As of 2019, I am the Brazilian literature editor for the Luso-Brazilian Review, and have also served as an elected member on the Executive Committee of the Brazilian Studies Association (2012-2016). Since 2017, I have directed Tulane’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program (including its graduate certificate program). I teach courses on Brazilian literature and culture in the Department of Spanish and Culture and the feminist theory seminar for graduate students and majors in the Gender and Sexuality Studies program, and led Tulane’s summer program in São Paulo in 2014 and 2015. Recent upper level and graduate course topics include human rights in Brazil as well Brazilian cities.
Courses
Additional Info
Number of Dissertations or Theses Supervised in the Past 5 Years: 2
Research
Contemporary Brazil, the Brazilian military dictatorship, Memory Studies, Transitional Justice, Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Cultures, Postdictatorial Latin America, Political Violence and Memory, Testimonial and Exile Literatures
Degrees
- Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, Portuguese, 2006
- M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, Portuguese, 2003
- B.A., Johns Hopkins University, Latin American Studies, 2000
Academic Experience
- Associate Professor, Tulane University, 2014 -
- Assistant Professor, Tulane University, 2009 – 2014
- Assistant Professor, University of North Caroline-Charlotte, 2006 – 2009
Distinctions
- Winner of the Simon Rodríguez Award for Best Undergraduate Teacher, Tulane University, 2017
- Honorable Mention for Robert Reis Best Book Prize, Brazilian Studies Association, 2016
- Thomas Award for Best Book, Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies, 2015
- Sturgis Leavitt Award for Best Article, Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies, 2011
- Glick Fellowship, School of Liberal Arts, Tulane University, 2011
Languages
- Portuguese
- Spanish
- French
Overseas Experience
- Brazil
- Argentina
- Cuba
- Nicaragua
Selected Publications
- 2022. “Making the Harms of Street Harassment Visible: Think Olga and Brazil’s Feminist Spring.” Forthcoming in Hispanic Issues Online. Special issue on Brazilian cities. Eds. Sophia Beal and Gustavo Prieto. 28 (2022): 85-105.
- 2022. “From Tweets to the Streets: Women’s Documentary Filmmaking and Brazil’s Feminist Spring.” Forthcoming in Women-Centered Brazil Cinema Brazil: Filmmakers and Protagonists of the 21st Century, eds. Cacilda Rego and Jack Draper, Latin America Cinema
- 2022. “Struggle at the Margins: The Intersections of Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Brazil’s Literature of Revolution.” Forthcoming in Latin American Literatures in Transition: War and Revolution, vol. IV, Amanda Holmes and Par Kumaraswami, Cambridge Un
- 2021. “Grrrl Zines, Riot Grrrl/Minas do Rock, and Feminist Cultural Studies in Brazil.” Language, Image, Power. Ed. Susan Larson. Routledge. Pp 135-149
- 2020. A Prime Time to Remember: Memory Merchandising in Globo’s Anos Rebeldes. In Accounting for Violence (pp. 41–68). Duke University Press.
- 2020. A Prime Time to Remember: Memory Merchandising in Globo’s Anos Rebeldes. In Accounting for Violence (pp. 41–68). Duke University Press.
- 2019. “From Truth Commission to Post-Truth Politics,” Current History 118 (February 2019): 68-74
- 2018. “Haunting Pasts and The Politics of Street Naming in Nicaragua and Brazil,” City & Society 30. 1 (April 2018).
- 2016. “O momento da memória: A produção artístico-cultural e a justiça de transição no Brasil.” Revista Anistia. Vol. 10: 114-130.
- 2016. “Toward of Culture of Memory in Brazil: Reading Bernardo Kucinski’s K. as Testimony and Literature.” Luso- Brazilian Review. 53(2): 117-132.
- 2014. Memory’s Turn: Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
