Denise Ferreira da Silva

Associate Professor

Social Sciences Bldg. Room 225
Phone: 858.534.3405
Fax: 858.534.8194
E-mail: dsilva@ucsd.edu
Web: http://weber.ucsd.edu/~dsilva/

Fall 2008 Office Hours: TBA

2008-09 Courses:

Fall 2008:

ETHN 100 - Theories and Methods of Ethnic Studies
ETHN 200A - History of Ethnic Studies: Departures: A Genealogy of Critical Racial and Ethnic Studies

Winter 2009:

ETHN 257A - Social Theory

Spring 2009:

ETHN 1C - Introduction to Ethnic Studies: Race and Ethnic Relations / U.S.

Education:

Ph.D., Sociology - University of Pittsburgh , 1999.
M.A., Sociology - Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, 1991.
B.A., Social Sciences - Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, 1985

Areas of Interest:

Political/Social Theory, Critical Legal Studies, Cultural Studies

My theoretical work -- which is informed by research on themes such as Female Genital Cutting, Police Brutality, and Black Political Mobilization, and the rhetoric of the “War on Terror” -- consists primarily in the formulation of a critical strategy, global/historical analysis , which highlights the centrality of raciality in modern (post-Enlightenment) thought. Drawing from post-structural and feminist theory and psychoanalysis, it is offered as critique of liberal and contemporary critical theorizing, as it seeks to capture how raciality – as a scientific (sociological and anthropological) signifier of human difference which institutes globality as an ontological horizon – operates in the present global (juridical, economic, and symbolic) configuration. And, in doing so, it seeks to open up new venues for the theorizing of global justice. This concern results not only from my interdisciplinary training (Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, History, and Philosophy) but also from many years of political activism in my working-class neighborhood association (in Rio de Janeiro ) and in the black Brazilian movement.

Selected Publications:

(2007) Toward a Global Idea of Race. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press.

(2006) “ Á Brasileira : Racialidade e o Produto de um Desejo Destrutivo,” Revista Estudos Feministas

(Forthcoming) “The Scene of Nature” “The Scene of Nature.” David Theo Goldberg and Dragan Kujundzic (eds.) Races : Race in Deconstruction and Critical Theory . Durham : Duke University Press.

(2005) “‘Bahia, Pelô, Negro': Can the Sublatern (Subject of Raciality) Speak? Ethnicities 5 (3).

(2004) " Mapping Territories of Legality: An Exploratory Cartography of Black Female subjects". Patricia Tuitt and Peter Fitzpatrick (eds.). Critical Beings: Law, Nation, and the Global Subject ". Aldershot : Ashgate .

(2002) “Re-Writing the Black Subject: History and Culture in the Black Brazilian Emancipatory Text.” Peter Osborne and Stella Sandford (eds.) Philosophies of Race and Ethnicity . London : Athlone Press.

(2001) "Toward a Critique of the Socio-Logos of Justice: The Analytics of Raciality and the Production of Universality .” Social Identities , (7) 3.

(2001) “Voicing Resistance" in Eliezer Ben Rafael (ed.) in Identity, Culture, and Globalization . Boston : Brill Academic Publishers.

(1999) "The Drama of Modernity: Race and representation in television soap operas in Brazil " in Larry Crook and Randall Johnson (Eds.) Black Brazil . Culture, Identity, and Social Mobilization . Los Angeles : UCLA Latin American Center .

(1998) " Zumbi and Simpson, Farrakhan and Pelé : The Crossroads of Racial Discourse" Estudos Afro- Asiaticos , 37.

(1998) "Facts of Blackness: Brazil is not (Quite) the United States . . . And, Racial Politics in Brazil ?" Social Identities , 4 (2)

Courses:

Spring 2006:
ETHN 87 - Full Seminar Title: Diseases, Hurricanes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis: The Racial logic of Natural Disasters
In this seminar, we will examine the prevailing constructions of natural disasters, such as the ongoing HIV-AIDS in Africa, the 2004 Tsunami in Southeast Asia, the recent Earthquake in Pakistan, and the 2005 Hurricanes that affected the U.S. Gulf Coast and Central America. More particularly, we will discuss whether and how they reproduce and erase the economic(colonialism, imperialism, and globalization) and symbolic (racialization) processes which have configured the present global conditions.