Join author Steven Butterman for a special virtual discussion of his new scholarly monograph “Queering and Querying the Paradise of Paradox: LGBT Language, New Media, and Visual Cultures in Modern-Day Brazil.” Please email araff@clamsnet.org for the Zoom link!
Butterman’s book provides readers with a study of the characteristics that make life unique for sexual minorities in Brazil while also viewing Brazil in relation to global LGBT sociopolitical movements. It critically assesses the complex relationship(s) between the visual arts and political activism, carefully analyzing artistic, cinematic, and photographic representations of LGBTQ identities. Brazil provides a useful case to example, with the cultivation of ambiguity in contemporary (re)constructions of queer life. Butterman also conducts the first comprehensive discourse analysis of the dynamics and features of the largest LGBT Pride Parade in the world.
Steven Butterman, an Associate Professor of Portuguese and Director of the Portuguese Language Program since 2000, teaches Portuguese language courses and Brazilian literature and cultural studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami, where he also directed the Gender & Sexuality Studies (GSS) Program and launched the minor in LGBTQ Studies. Butterman has published books and articles on a wide range of topics, focusing on transnational LGBTQ+ studies, gender and feminist studies in the cultural contexts of Portuguese-speaking countries. Butterman is the author of Perversions on Parade: Brazilian Literature of Transgression and Postmodern Anti-Aesthetics in Glauco Mattoso, published in 2005 by San Diego State University Press and (In)Visibilidade Vigilante: representações midiáticas da maior parada gay do planeta, published by nVersos, in São Paulo, in 2012. In addition to his academic work, Butterman also serves regularly as an expert witness on asylum petition cases involving homophobia, lesbophobia, transphobia, and domestic violence in Brazil and other countries.
