- Email:
- llvanin@iu.edu
- Department:
- Spanish and Portuguese
- Campus:
- IU Bloomington
Laís Lara Vanin is a Brazilian PhD candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and a dancer at the IU African American Dance Company. Her research focuses on Afro-Brazilian literature and Black Studies. She has conducted research funded by the EURO Travel/Research Award in the archives of the National Library in Portugal about the Black Luso-Brazilian poet Antonio Gonçalves Crespo (1846-1883) and published an article in the Chiricú Journal about the life of Emi Bulhões (1905-1983) and the author’s approach to slavery and racism in Brazil. Vanin’s dissertation research addresses the authorial trajectory of black Brazilian women through the metaphor of hair transition, the process women go through to recover their natural hair after years of dangerous chemical straightening. She intends to do ethnographic work in a Brazilian beauty salon specializing in black hair, interviewing women who have embraced their natural afro curls. Her dissertation is currently entitled “Curly She-Wolves: Curly She-Wolves: Black Women and the Conquest of Freedom in Afro-Brazilian Literature."