Graduate Workshop with Maria Carolina Tomás | Turning Toward the Literary

Event details Date: Thursday, October 15, 2026 Time: 12:00 PM Location: TBA Type: Lecture / Workshop Audience: Students About this event In this informal discussion of work-in-progress, Professor Maria Carolina Tomás invites graduate students working in literary studies, as well as students interested in thinking with literature, to ask broader questions about Blackness and lived experience in the African Diaspora. Specifically, she will share her new work on Jeferson Tenório, focusing on narrative strategies, narrators, and plotting, to think through the complex ways that Black Brazilians navigate changing racial dynamics in the country. Tenório is one of the most influential voices in Brazilian literature, a position consolidated by his winning the Jabuti Prize in 2021 for his novel O Avesso da Pele , and race constitutes a central theme in his work. His Black characters confront processes of racialization that permeate schools, workplaces, family relationships, romantic relationships, and interactions with public institutions. Racism is presented both in its explicit manifestations and through everyday practices, forms of constraint, silencing, suspicion, and mechanisms of control over Black bodies. More info: https://events.berkeley.edu/clacs/event/332501-graduate-workshop-with-maria-carolina-toms-turning-to Official event details: https://events.berkeley.edu/clacs/event/332501-graduate-workshop-with-maria-carolina-toms-turning-to