Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California and Mark Claster Mamolen Fellow (Fall 2022) at the Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research. She is a host on the New Books Network where she interviews authors about their recently published academic books.
For the fellowship project Gillam will work on Diasporic Agency examines how Afro-Brazilians leverage African American ideas, cultures, and performances in ways that challenge Brazilian racial exceptionalism. Brazilian racial exceptionalism is the idea that in comparison to other multiracial polities Brazil exhibits less virulent forms of racism. Reighan argues that certain uses of African Americans in Afro-Brazilian print culture, performances, films, and interactions calls into question Brazilian racial exceptionalism by asserting similar conditions of antiblack racism in the US and Brazil.