Help Support the NBN on Patreon | Visit New Books Network en Español!

New Books Network

About Reighan Gillam

Reighan Gillam is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creations. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).

NBN Episodes hosted by Reighan:

Anthropology June 4, 2023

The Politics of Survival

Black Women Social Welfare Beneficiaries in Brazil and the United States

Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
Listen:
Poor Black women who benefit from social welfare are marginalized in a number of ways by interlocking systemic racism, sexism, and classism. The media renders them invisible or casts them …
Anthropology May 22, 2023

Afro-Brazilians in Telenovelas

Social, Political, and Economic Realities

Samantha Nogueira Joyce

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In Afro-Brazilians in Telenovelas: Social, Political, and Economic Realities (Lexington Books, 2022), Samantha Nogueira Joyce examines representations of Blackness on Brazilian TV, interrogating the role of mass media in developing …
Anthropology May 13, 2023

When Forests Run Amok

War and Its Afterlives in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian Territories

Daniel Ruiz-Serna

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In When Forests Run Amok: War and Its Afterlives in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian Territories (Duke University Press, 2023) Daniel Ruiz-Serna follows the afterlives of war, showing how they affect the variety …
Anthropology May 1, 2023

Mirrors of Whiteness

Media, Middle-Class Resentment, and the Rise of the Far Right in Brazil

Mauro Porto

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In Mirrors of Whiteness: Media, Middle-Class Resentment, and the Rise of the Far Right in Brazil (U Pittsburgh Press, 2023), Mauro P. Porto examines the conservative revolt of Brazil's white …
Anthropology April 14, 2023

Cinegogía

An Open Access Resource for Teaching and Studying Latin American Cinema

Bridget Franco

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
Cinegogía is an open-access website devoted to the teaching and study of Latin American cinemas. Bridget Franco, an associate professor of Spanish at College of the Holy Cross, founded and coordinates …
Anthropology March 1, 2023

Joy and Pain

A Story of Black Life and Liberation in Five Albums

Damien M. Sojoyner

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
This highly original story reflects on how the carceral state shapes daily life for young Black people--and how Black Americans resist, find joy, and cultivate new visions for the future …
Anthropology February 13, 2023

From Savage to Negro

Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954

Lee D. Baker

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
On today’s podcast we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Dr. Lee D. Baker’s book From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 (University of …
Anthropology January 24, 2023

Undocumented Motherhood

Conversations on Love, Trauma, and Border Crossing

Elizabeth Farfán-Santos

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
Claudia Garcia crossed the border because her toddler, Natalia, could not hear. Leaving behind everything she knew in Mexico, Claudia recounts the terror of migrating alone with her toddler and …
Latin American Studies January 17, 2023

Voices of the Race

Black Newspapers in Latin America, 1870-1960

Paulina Laura Alberto, George Reid Andrews, and Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
Voices of the Race: Black Newspapers in Latin America, 1870-1960 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) offers English translations of more than one hundred articles published in Black newspapers in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba …
Anthropology November 29, 2022

Permanent Markers

Race, Ancestry, and the Body After the Genome

Sarah Abel

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the public to answer difficult questions about …
Anthropology October 24, 2022

Amphibious Subjects

Sasso and the Contested Politics of Queer Self-Making in Neoliberal Ghana

Kwame Edwin Otu

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
Amphibious Subjects: Sasso and the Contested Politics of Queer Self-Making in Neoliberal Ghana (University of California Press, 2022) is an ethnographic study of a community of self-identified effeminate men--known in local parlance …
Anthropology October 12, 2022

Contesting Race and Citizenship

Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean

Camilla Hawthorne

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean (Cornell University Press, 2022) is an original study of Black politics and varieties of political mobilization in Italy. Although there is extensive …
Anthropology August 4, 2022

Academic Outsider

Stories of Exclusion and Hope

Victoria Reyes

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In Academic Outsider: Stories of Exclusion and Hope (Stanford University Press, 2022), sociologist Victoria Reyes combines her personal experiences with research findings to examine how academia creates conditional citizenship for its …
Anthropology July 13, 2022

Second-Class Daughters

Black Brazilian Women and Informal Adoption as Modern Slavery

Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
A legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, Brazil is home to the largest number of African descendants outside Africa and the greatest number of domestic workers in the world. Drawing …
Anthropology June 10, 2022

Minoritarian Liberalism

A Travesti Life in a Brazilian Favela

Moises Lino e Silva

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
Minoritarian Liberalism: A Travesti Life in a Brazilian Favela (University of Chicago Press, 2022) is a mesmerizing ethnography of the largest favela in Rio, where residents articulate their own politics of …
Anthropology May 10, 2022

Suspicion

Vaccines, Hesitancy, and the Affective Politics of Protection in Barbados

Nicole Charles

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In 2014 Barbados introduced a vaccine to prevent certain strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) and reduce the risk of cervical cancer in young women. Despite the disproportionate burden of …
Anthropology April 13, 2022

Sonorous Worlds

Musical Enchantment in Venezuela

Yana Stainova

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
El Sistema is Venezuela's large scale classical music education program for poor and working class people on the economic, social, and physical margins. In Sonorous Worlds: Musical Enchantment in Venezuela (University …
Latin American Studies April 13, 2022

Selling Black Brazil

Race, Nation, and Visual Culture in Salvador, Bahia

Anadelia Romo

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In Selling Black Brazil: Race, Nation, and Visual Culture in Salvador, Bahia (University of Texas Press, 2022), Anadelia Romo argues that visual images were central to the shift from emulating …
Anthropology March 30, 2022

Weighing the Future

Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era

Natali Valdez

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era (University of California Press, 2022), Natali Valdez examines research trials that enroll pregnant people in the United …
Anthropology February 16, 2022

The Presidential Elections of Trump and Bolsonaro, Whiteness, and the Nation

Vânia Penha-Lopes

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
The Presidential Elections of Trump and Bolsonaro, Whiteness, and the Nation (Lexington Books, 2021) is a sociological analysis of the similarities between the elections of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro …
Anthropology November 10, 2021

Being La Dominicana

Race and Identity in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo

Rachel Afi Quinn

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
Dominican women being seen--and seeing themselves--in the media Rachel Afi Quinn investigates how visual media portray Dominican women and how women represent themselves in their own creative endeavors in response …
Anthropology November 1, 2021

Becoming Gods

Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals

Vania Smith-Oka

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals (Rutgers University Press, 2021), Vania Smith-Oka follows a cohort of interns throughout their year of medical training in hospitals to understand how …
Anthropology October 4, 2021

Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba

Takkara K. Brunson

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba (University of Florida Press, 2021), Dr. Takkara Brunson examines the political strategies used by Afro-Cuban women between 1886 and 195 …
Anthropology July 21, 2021

Finding Afro-Mexico

Race and Nation after the Revolution

Theodore W. Cohen

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In Finding Afro-Mexico: Race and Nation after the Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2020) Theodore Cohen examines the ways in which different protagonists sought to incorporate Blackness into Mexican national identity …