Wednesday, April 18 | 4:00 PM  Lecture, reception to follow
Walter Library, Room 101

"The New Portuguese Letters, Anti-colonial Struggle and the Decolonization of Gender "  presented by Professor Ana Paula Ferreira

This talk is part of the first book-length study to query the voices of Portuguese women as creative writers, journalists and feminist activists in regard to the often ignored, but most prolonged European colonial empire in the African continent. The focus will be on the transnational political import of “woman as colony of man” and of “women’s culture” as rendered in the New Portuguese Letters, originally published in 1972 by the so-called Three Marias. They were brought to trial for “obscenity” and “abuse of the freedom of the press,” attracting international attention to fascist-colonialist Portugal. The text arguably signals the beginning of the revolutionary process that found expression in the coup d’état of April 25th, 1974 by military generals refusing to go on fighting in Angola and Mozambique.