Olga Rodriguez-Ulloa is a cultural theorist focused on Indigeneity, Blackness, and trans feminism in the Americas. Her book project “Sadistic Cholas. Sex and Violence in Contemporary Peru” examines popular and experimental music, visual arts, performance, literature, and grassroots organizing by people and colectivas who identify as chola(urban indigenous), negra (Black woman), travesti, trans, non-binary, and queer feminists. In their confrontation with the violences of coloniality, patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy, they rehearse aesthetics of self-defense, anger, and revenge, while contemplating the making of new commons via care and radical love or munay in Quechua. For an autoethnographic and literary perspective of the book see “Sadistic Chola Manifesto.” In the same vein, Rodríguez-Ulloa’s previous work focused on systemic critiques channeled through punk aesthetics and politics of making. Check her co-edited volume Punk. Las Américas Edition (2021). 

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This Sawyer Seminar is funded by the Mellon Foundation.