Black Women's Sexuality: A Cross-Cultural Dialogue between Brazil and the US

Mireille Miller-Young

• Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. The former UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow researches and teaches about race, gender, and sexuality in US history, popular and film cultures, and the sex industries.  Her groundbreaking book, A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography (Duke University Press, 2014), was awarded the Sara A. Whaley Prize for Best Book on Women and Labor by the National Women’s Studies Association and the John Hope Franklin Prize for Best Book by the American Studies Association. Dr. Miller-Young is co-convener of the New Sexualities Research Initiative as well as the Black Sexuality Studies Collective at UC Santa Barbara, and she is a former convener of the Black Sexual Economies Project at Washington University School of Law. Miller-Young is an editor of The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure (2013), which has been translated into German and Spanish and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Anthology, and she is an editor of the published volume Black Sexual Economies: Race and Sex in a Culture of Capital (2019). 

Ana Paula da Silva

• Professor at the Federal Institute of Higher Education (INFES) at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF). Ana Paula is also a permanent faculty member of the Postgraduate Program in Justice and Security (PPGJS) at UFF and serves as the Affirmative Action, Diversity, and Equity Advisor (AFIDE/UFF). She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from UFRJ (PPGSA/IFCS/UFRJ) and is the author of the book Pelé and The Mongrel Complex: Discourses on Race and Modernity in Brazil (Editora EDUFF, 2014). She coordinates the Intersectionality Research Center (NUDEIN) and engages in research on ethnic-racial relations, gender, and sexualities, focusing on themes such as sexual tourism, prostitution, and international human trafficking. Actively engaged in the Brazilian Anthropology Association (ABA), she serves as vice-coordinator of the Gender and Sexuality Committee, is a member of the Committee of Black Anthropologists, and contributes to the Human Rights Commission. Ana Paula is a member of Coletivo PutaDavida.

María Elvira Díaz-Benítez

• Professor at the National Museum of Social Anthropology of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (MN/UFRJ) and completed her postdoctoral studies at the Center for Gender Studies PAGU at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Díaz-Benítez specializes in urban anthropology with a focus on racial and ethnic relations, homosexuality, pornography, and dissenting bodies and sexual practices. Díaz-Benítez is the organizer of the volume Dissenting Pleasures (Garamond / CLAM) and the dossier Pornos (Cadernos PAGU). She is also the author of Sex in Networks: Behind the Scenes of Brazilian Porn (Zahar, 2010).

Thaddeus Blanchette 

• Professor of anthropology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Campus Macaé. He holds degrees in Portuguese, Sociology, and Latin American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as a master's degree and PhD in Social Anthropology from the National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. His professional background includes work as a translator at institutions such as the National Museum of the American Indian, National Museum of Brazil and UFF. Blanchette's expertise lies in Anthropology, focusing on ethnicity, indigenism, development, and gender relations. His research and teaching interests include Rio de Janeiro, immigration, sexual tourism, prostitution, indigenous governance, development, US and Brazilian history.