Welcoming new Center faculty Meg Weeks

Welcoming new Center faculty Meg Weeks

MALAS student Daniela Lizarazo interviews professor of Brazilian history, gender studies

Professor Meg Weeks is the newest professor to join the Center's core faculty. A historian of modern Latin America focusing on Brazil and women's history, Dr. Weeks taught the spring course "Social Movements and Gender in Latin America." Daniela Lizarazo (MALAS 2025), one of the students in that class, had the chance to sit down with Dr. Weeks and learn more about her:

DL: Profe, what brought you to your field in academia?

MW: I study women's history, specifically grassroots women's mobilizations, and also issues surrounding reproduction and reproductive rights, as well as labor and sexuality. These were always things that interested me even before I became an academic. I was drawn to history because of its focus on archival research, and going back to the sources to read what people wrote, and learn what they thought about what was happening to them. That has always been really compelling to me.

DL: What is your research and academic writing about?

MW: My first book project is about sex workers and domestic workers in Brazil during Brazil's democratic transition and in the aftermath of democratic consolidation in the 1990s. So, I'm thinking about ideas of what women’s work is, and how women mobilize around archetypes of femininity, whether reinforcing them, challenging them, or leveraging them for political advantage. My research starts in the 1960s, and then goes through the election of Lula, the first election of Lula in 2002. I also have some nonacademic writing projects for magazines and literary journals on art, feminism, and labor reproductive rights, mostly in Latin America. [Dr. Weeks is also a translator; she recently completed the English translation of “Daughter, Mother, Grandmother, and Whore,” by Brazilian sex worker activist Gabriela Leite. It will be available in September 2024.]

DL: What do you hope to contribute to the Center?

MW: I suppose I have a diverse skillset that I bring with me in the work that I do, as a historian and a Brazilianist, working with gender and sexuality as well as literature and language. I hope to contribute by working with students and being committed to you all and the work that you're doing, and helping you, whether you're thinking of going into a professional field after the degree or thinking of the degree as a stepping stone to a PhD. I hope that as an educator I can get you on a path to pursue your next step. ◆