Monday, November 2, 5:30 pm on Zoom (MST)
A Counterpoints Lecture with Kristie Soares, Assistant Professor of Women & Gender Studies
Presentation link here, Zoom meeting ID: 940 2532 5981
Free and Open to Everyone
Professor Soares will deliver the inaugural AMRC Counterpoints Lecture (featuring interdisciplinary distinguished music scholars) with her talk, "Dancing With Death: Celia Cruz’s Azúcar and Queer of Color Survival." This presentation explores the evolution of Celia Cruz’s signature catchphrase azúcar [sugar] from her early career with Fania Records, to her later music with Sony Music, and finally to its posthumous adoption by queer fans of color both at her funeral and in the aftermath of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre. In doing so the talk argues that azúcar represented an embodied way to negotiate the patriarchal norms of the artist’s records labels, a mode of pushing back against the aspirational whiteness and heteronormativity of the Cuban community, and a model for queer of color survival in a murderous world.