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This panel brings together interdisciplinary experts to discuss how anti-Blackness extends beyond history and carries continued implications for ongoing technologies of anti-Black gender violence. Panelists will take an interdisciplinary approach to grappling with how assumptions of Blackness bracket the divide between the violence of (un)gendering and resistance.
The panel will feature Patrice Douglass, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley and a 2024-2025 Matrix Faculty Fellow; Zamansele Nsele, Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary African & African Diasporic Art at UC Berkeley; Matheuzza Xavier, artist and researcher, and PhD candidate in Performing Arts at UFBA; and Márcia Ribeiro, Brazilian lawyer, specialist in Criminal Procedure Law, Master’s in Law from UFMG, and currently a PhD candidate at the same institution.
Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender, Department of Ethnic Studies, Department of Geography, Department of History of Art, the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, and the Institute for Gender and Sexuality Research (IGSR).
Panelists
Patrice Douglass is an Assistant Professor in Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley. She holds a PhD and MA in Culture and Theory from the University of California, Irvine, a MA in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Riverside, and a BA in Feminist Studies and Legal Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is also currently a Matrix Faculty Fellow.
Márcia Ribeiro is a Brazilian lawyer, specialist in Criminal Procedure Law, Master in Law from UFMG, and currently a PhD candidate at the same institution. She is a researcher at Diverso UFMG – Legal Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, and a Legal Analyst at Mapa do Acolhimento, a Brazilian organization that provides legal and psychological support to women survivors of gender-based violence across Brazil. She is currently conducting a doctoral research internship at the University of California – Berkeley. Her expertise lies in integrating legal knowledge and experience in assisting women survivors of gender-based violence to create technical and compassionate interventions that generate impact.
Zamansele “Zama” Nsele is an Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary African & African Diasporic Art. She is currently working on her first monograph, provisionally titled, “Reckoning with Post-Apartheid & Imperialist Nostalgias in Archival Art Practice in Africa”. In the monograph, Zamansele Nsele explores how nostalgia can generate visual epistemologies that sanitize, disavow, and aestheticize oppressive racial histories— despite nostalgia’s conventional significance as an affective structure that affirms Black social life. One of the central themes that is consistent in Zamansele’s research and writing is her critique of image-based rituals of antiblack violence.
Matheuzza Xavier is a Travesti (Trans femme), an artist residing between Brazil and the United States since 2022, pursuing a multifaceted career in the film industry. Matheuzza is an actor, playwright, writer, screenwriter, director, art curator, organizer and researcher on issues of race, gender and sexuality. Their work primarily focuses on investigating the intersection of antiblackness and transgerderness within the domains of performance, performing arts, media, social and gender studies. Matheuzza is a PhD Candidate and holds an MA in the Performing Arts Program at The Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). Currently she is a Visiting Scholar in the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at UC Berkeley, and holds a BA in Theater and Performing Arts from the same institution in Bahia, Brazil. In 2023, Matheuzza’s television show project, OCEANS, was recognized and awarded by PrimeVideo Amazon Studios during the Black Stories Screenwriting Lab. Matheuzza’s feature film project, Overbrook, has received numerous awards and is currently in the development phase. Furthermore, Matheuzza has engaged in various theatrical performances, art exhibitions, and performances since 2016 in Brazil.