The Gender of Debt: The Circulation of Women in Amazonia

Catalog description

This course offers a critical and interdisciplinary exploration of women’s circulation in Amazonia, inspired by Denise Ferreira da Silva’s The Unpayable Debt (2024) and Octavia E. Butler’s novel Kindred: Blood Ties (2019). We will examine how Black feminist poetics challenges linear notions of time, social hierarchies, and systems of exploitation. Using Verenilde Pereira’s novel Um Rio sem Fim (1998) as a central text, the course analyzes historical and contemporary displacements of indigenous and racialized women in the Amazon, connecting these issues to transnational feminist debates on care, indebtedness, and social repair. The course will be taught in Portuguese and Spanish, and students may use either language in discussions and assignments.