USC.edu

Reighan Gillam

Associate Professor of Anthropology
Email rgillam@usc.edu

Biography

Reighan Gillam researches the ways in which subjects experience, negotiate, and challenge stereotypical and controlling images. She examines these issues through the lens of Afro-Brazilian media producers in southeastern Brazil. She is currently working on a book manuscript, entitled Visualizing Black Lives, to understand how Afro-Brazilians turn to their racialized experiences as a source for visual content and the kinds of images they generate. In the Fall 2018, Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center named her the Peggy Rockefeller Scholar.

Education

  • Ph.D. Anthropology, Cornell University
  • B.A. Anthropology, University of Virginia

  • Tenure Track Appointments

    • Assistant Professor, University of Southern California, 2018 –
    • Assistant Professor, University of Michigan, 2016 – 2018

    PostDoctoral Appointments

    • Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Michigan,

  • Research Keywords

    Brazil, Race and Ethnicity, African Diaspora, Media, Representation, Antiracism, Resistance, Social Movements

  • Book Chapter

    • Gillam, R. (2016). But You (Don’t) Look Like an African American: African Diaspora Looking Relations between Brazil and the United States. Race and the Politics of Knowledge Production: Dia pp. 99-111. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Gillam, R. (2013). Resistance Televised: The TV da Gente Television Network and Brazilian Racial Politics. Watching While Black: Centering the Television of pp. 207-219.

    Journal Article

    • Gillam, R. (2017). All Tangled Up: Intersecting Stigmas of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Mariana Rondón’s Bad Hair. 1 pp. 47-61.Black Camera. Vol. 9 (1),
    • Gillam, R. (2017). Representing Black Girlhood in Brazil: Culture and Strategies of Empowerment. 4 pp. 609-625.Communication, Culture, and Critique. Vol. 10 (4),
    • Gillam, R. (2016). The help, unscripted: constructing the black revolutionary domestic in Afro-Brazilian media. 6 pp. 1043-1056.Feminist Media Studies. Vol. 16 (6),
    • Gillam, R. (2016). Learning to Transgress: Law 10.639 and Teacher Training Classrooms in São Paulo, Brazil. 1 pp. 70-79.Transforming Anthropology. Vol. 24 (1),
    • Gillam, R. (2015). Do I Look Suspicious?’: Digital Acts, Narratives of Resistance to Police Violence in Brazil. 3-4 pp. 286-302.College Language Association. Vol. 58 (3-4),
    • Gillam, R. (2013). (En)countering Exceptionalism: Afro -Brazilian Responses to the Rise of Obama. 3 pp. 323-335.Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies. Vol. 8 (3),