Sue Houchins will discuss Sor Teresa Chicaba, an African nun who spent her years after enslavement in a cloistered monastery.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
2125 Rolfe Hall
UCLA campus
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Houchins' talk will discuss her work with colleague Baltasar Fra-Molinero, on a 150-page historical and critical introduction to the hagiography and as-told-to slave narrative of Sor Teresa Chicaba, the Black nun of Salamanca. Besides discussing the discursive construction of African-ness, race, and gender in this eighteenth-century work, they are discussing the genre of hagiography, which is one of the longest lived and which finds itself not only in religious confession but also in novels such as Thulani Davis's Maker of Saints.

Sue Houchins holds an appointment in the African American Studies Program at Bates College and teaches courses cross-listed in Women and Gender Studies.  For example, among the classes she offers are the following: African American Women and Feminist Thought, Black Feminist Literary Theory, Politics of Pleasure and Desire: Black Feminist Independent Film.  The topics of her research are at the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality and explore women of the Black Atlantic/Black Diaspora.  Presently she is completing a book-length study of the representations of Black lesbians in texts drawn from the women's literatures of Africa and the Americas; an edition of scholarly essays on W. E. B. Du Bois for Annals of Scholarship with her colleague, Charles Nero; and with her colleague Baltasar Fra-Molinero, an annotated translation with a critical and historical introduction of the eighteenth-century Spanish hagiography of Sor Teresa Chicaba, an African Dominican nun who spent her years after enslavement in a cloistered monastery.

Co-sponsored by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies

Cost : Free; parking is available for $8.

www.csw.ucla.edu

Sponsor(s): Gender Studies, Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies.