Episode 1 - Mara Viveros Vigoya: Raza y género en la vorágine colombiana

Episode 1

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Mara Viveros Vigoya: Simón Bolívar Professor 2024/2025, CLAS

For our inaugural cast, we are delighted to welcome Mara Viveros Vigoya. Mara is one of the leading voices in Latin American feminism and in writing about and advocating for the Afro-descendant populations of the region, especially the Afro-Colombians. As a black woman, she has been a pioneer in academia and as a public intellectual. Coming from a middle-class background in provincial Columbia, she studied at the Universidad Nacional, earned her  doctorate from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris and is Profesora Titular at the Escuela de Estudios de Género of the Universidad Nacional. In 2019 she was elected President of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), the leading such association in the world with more than 13,000 members. She has held many visiting positions in Latin America and Europe, and in 2024-25 held the Cátedra Simón Bolívar Professor at the University of Cambridge.   

Mara brings to her work an open mind and a spirit of enthusiasm, as well as commitment to the cause of women and black people. She also brings her own story into her writing and her activism, and her latest book ‘Breaking the boundaries of the Colombian socio-racial order’, about the black middle classes of Colombia, draws inspiration from her family and her own  story as well as on her research. This conversation will take place in Spanish. 

Bibliography from Mara’s podcast

  • Viveros, Mara y William Cañón. 1998. “Pa’ bravo… yo soy candela, palo y piedra. Los quibdoseños”. En: Teresa Valdés y José Olavarría (eds.), Masculinidad/es. pp. 125-138. Santiago de Chile: Flacso-Isis.
  • Viveros, Mara. 2002 “La imbricación de los estereotipos racistas y sexistas. El caso de Quibdó”. En: 150 años de la abolición de la esclavización en Colombia. Desde la marginalidad a la construcción de la nación. pp. 508-529. Bogotá: Aguilar.
  • Viveros, Mara. 1998. Dionisios negros. Sexualidad, corporalidad y orden racial en Colombia. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
  • Wade, Peter. 1993. “Sex and masculinity in Fieldwork among Colombian Blacks”. En: Karim, Waizir; Diane Bell y Pat Caplan (ed.) Gendered fields. pp. 199-214. London: Routledge.
  • Mosquera, Claudia. 1998. Acá antes no se veían negros. Bogotá: Observatorio de Cultura Urbana.
  • Viveros Vigoya, Mara. 2025a. Breaking the Boundaries of the Colombian Socio-Racial Order: Black Middle Classes through an Intersectional Lens. Lanham: Lexington.
  • —. 2025b. El oxímoron de las clases medias negras: Movilidad social e interseccionalidad en Colombia. Giuadalajara, Bielefeld: Editorial Universidad de Guadalajara.