Udall Center Fellows Talk by Prof. Jennifer Roth-Gordon
When
Where
Join us at the Udall Center or online for a presentation by Jennifer Roth-Gordon, 2023-24 Udall Center Fellow and Associate Professor in the School of Anthropology in the UArizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, titled "Experiencing Extreme Heat in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil."
Prof. Roth-Gordon will be presenting her work as a Udall Center Fellow, followed by a question-and-answer session with attendees. The Udall Center Fellows Program offers a semester off from normal teaching to allow for creative scholarship and pursuit of funds to further the Fellow’s research.
In this presentation, Prof. Roth-Gordon draws on interviews and ethnographic research conducted in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil across neighborhoods that range from auto-constructed, unregulated, low-income favelas, to white and wealthy coastal neighborhoods, to distant suburban areas that constitute urban heat islands. She focuses on two analytic lenses that emerge from centering people’s daily experiences and knowledge of heat. In the first, the concept of thermal control is introduced to foreground the impact of racial and socioeconomic inequality on the lived experience of extreme heat, as individuals retain differential abilities to regulate their own bodily temperature and the temperature of their ambient environment. In the second, the naturalization of extreme heat, we see how beliefs about how Rio residents are “used to” the heat can impact the perception of health risks and public discussion surrounding heat.
Lunch will be provided to in-person attendees beginning at 11:30 AM, but space is limited. Please register to attend in person by April 5. Note that the Zoom broadcast will begin between 11:45 AM-12:00 PM after in-person attendees have eaten.