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Event Details
Welcome to the Pluriversal Design SIG's BookClub! In this Book Club, we focus on the works of authors from all over the 'pluriverse'. We intentionally focus on the works of authors from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and their diasporas. In our sessions, we discuss how their works impact us as designers.
This newest series of Book club events will highlight texts from authors that have not been translated into English.
For this book club, designer, researcher, and educator Renata M. Leitão will introduce and lead a discussion on Antônio Bispo dos Santos' book "A terra dá, a terra quer" (The Land Gives, the Land Wants).
About the author:
Antonio Bispo dos Santos (1959-2023), known as Nego Bispo, was a beloved and influential Brazilian intellectual activist who delved into the dynamics of colonization. Raised in the quilombo Saco-Curtume, Nego Bispo was also one of the leading exponents of the quilombola struggle for land and social rights. Quilombolas are the descendants of Africans who escaped slavery and formed rural settlements, known as quilombos.
In the book, Nego Bispo puts forward the concept of “counter-colonization,” exploring the interplay between socio-political struggles and cosmovisions.
About the presenter (from Cornell.edu):
Dr. Leitao is an assistant professor in the Department of Human Centered Design at Cornell University. She is a graphic designer and social justice-focused design researcher with several years of experience in intercultural and collaborative projects with Indigenous and marginalized communities. Her research is at the intersection of critical design, participatory design, communication design, and design anthropology. Dr. Leitao’s specialty is participatory action research.
She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Design and a MASc in Design & Complexity (Université de Montréal, Canada) and a BA in Graphic Design (Mackenzie University, Brazil). She was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (under the supervision of Dr. Dori Tunstall – OCAD University). Before joining Cornell, she taught in the Graphic Design program at OCAD University in Toronto.
Raised in a multiracial family, Dr. Leitão is committed to decolonizing design research and education. She launched, as co-chair, the DRS Pluriversal Design Special Interest Group (PluriSIG), an international research network that aims to highlight multiple perspectives in design, especially from those commonly oppressed by and excluded from mainstream design narratives. Dr. Leitão is also a founder of the virtual conferences PIVOT, which focuses on decoloniality and pluriversality in design. She chaired its second virtual conference, “Pivot 2021: Dismantling and Reassembling—Tools for Alternative Futures”, hosted by OCAD University.
