A Counterpoints Lecture with Kristie Soares, Assistant Professor of Women & Gender Studies
Monday, November 2, 5:30 pm on Zoom (MST)
Cllick here to view the event recording
Free and Open to Everyone
Professor Soares will deliver the inaugural AMRC Counterpoints Lecture (featuring interdisciplinary distinguished music scholars) with her talk, "Dancing With Death: Celia Cruz’s Azúcar and Queer of Color Survival." This presentation explores the evolution of Celia Cruz’s (picture left) signature catchphrase azúcar [sugar] from her early career with Fania Records, to her later music with Sony Music, and finally to its posthumous adoption by queer fans of color both at her funeral and in the aftermath of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre. In doing so the talk argues that azúcar represented an embodied way to negotiate the patriarchal norms of the artist’s records labels, a mode of pushing back against the aspirational whiteness and heteronormativity of the Cuban community, and a model for queer of color survival in a murderous world.
Kristie Soares is an Assistant Professor of Women & Gender Studies and an active performance artist. Both her performance work and her research explore queerness in Caribbean and Latinx communities.