¡SOLAS Presents! Graduate Student: Carson Morris Thursday, November 20th, 12:30 @ the LAII

Join SOLAS at the Latin American & Iberian Institute for a ¡SOLAS Presents! lecture series event with a presentation from UNM graduate student Carson Morris.

Striptease, Respectability, and Shame: The Politics of Sexual Performance in Cold War Chile

Carson Morris received her M.A. in Latin American Studies from UNM in 2006, and is currently a doctoral candidate (ABD) in History at UNM.

Carson’s presentation will focus on striptease and other sexual performance. She contends that they are critical to both challenging and reinforcing gender and sexuality in state and society. Her findings suggest that the dearth of histories of sexual performance in Latin America clouds our understanding of sexuality in this region and serves to further normalize the heterosexual gender binary. Scholars have examined different types of sexual performance as masochistic phenomena of dictatorship in Argentina and Chile, explaining Chile’s booming sexual performance market as a result of Pinochet’s neoliberal opening of the market. Focusing on 1950-1990, Carson’s paper traces continuities and ruptures in Chile’s long history of sexual performance 

David Rodriquez. Violette Fresia Soto. Photograph.

Photograph courtesy of Carson Morris.

under democracy and dictatorship, exposing sexual performance’s emancipatory power as well as its heteronormative functions. Examining cabaret show books, photographs, business advertisements, nude magazines, press coverage, state and city level laws regulating such businesses, and testimonies of photographers, dancers, and artists, Carson shows that sexual performance in Chile transcends both state level politics and changes in political regimes, and that striptease was imbued with different degrees of respectability and shame at different historical moments. Specifically highlighting queer and transgender sexual performance throughout the period, Carson demonstrates the emancipatory power of performance, allowing space for expressions of bodies, genders and sexualities that challenged normative regulations.

For a PDF of the event flyer, click here.