Book Description

Explores activist scholarship in relation to feminist and social movements in the Americas. Taking Risks offers a creative, interdisciplinary approach to narrating the stories of activist scholarship by women. The essays are based on the textual analysis of interviews, oral histories, ethnography, video storytelling, and theater. The contributors come from many disciplinary backgrounds, including theater, history, literature, sociology, feminist studies, and cultural studies. The topics range from the underground library movement in Cuba, femicide in Juárez, community radio in Venezuela, video archives in Colombia, exiled feminists in Canada, memory activism in Argentina, sex worker activists in Brazil, rural feminists in Nicaragua, to domestic violence organizations for Latina immigrants in Texas. Each essay addresses two themes: telling stories and taking risks. The authors understand women activists across the Americas as storytellers who, along with the authors themselves, work to fill the Latin American and Caribbean studies archives with histories of resistance. In addition to sharing the activists’ stories, the contributors weave in discussions of scholarly risk taking to speak to the challenges and importance of elevating the storytellers and their histories. “Julie Shayne took a risk with this book, and the result is impressive: By challenging the activism-research divide that US academies so often sustain, the authors in this collection challenge epistemological as well as national, race, class, age, and gender boundaries. Taking Risks is a must read for researchers and students alike!” — Amy Lind, editor of Development, Sexual Rights, and Global Governance