Paloma Rodrigo Gonzales
Department
Anthropology Department
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I am a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in race, Indigeneity, embodiment, and semiotics. My research investigates how bodily features come to be interpreted as racial signs. My current book project is a historical and ethnographic study of the mancha mongólica, or “Mongolian spot.” A purple or bluish birthmark commonly found on the lower back of newborns that gradually fades after birth, the spot is widely perceived in Peru as an indicator of Indigenous ancestry. This often pathologized birthmark is widespread yet denied, evidential yet hidden, recurrent yet ephemeral. Despite its ambiguity and eventual disappearance, the mark retains its evidentiary power. It thus challenges a core epistemic principle of racial thinking: the presumed link between invisible traits and the racialized, visible body.
I have taught courses on anthropological theory, embodiment, racialization, Spanish, and Latin America. My academic work is informed by my experience with the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission during the country’s 2001 transition to democracy. I am particularly interested in how entrenched racism that generates dehumanizing violence persists alongside societal and institutional denial of racist practices and experiences.
Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2024
M.A. in Latin American Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2010
B.A. in Anthropology, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2006
- Race, racialization, and racism.
- Racial categorization, Indigeneity, Blackness
- Embodiment
- Semiotics and visuality
- Science and Technology Studies
- Peru, Andes, Latin America
Sin, Disease, Subversion and the Experience of Race in Latin America (ANTH 3243BC)
This course provides an exploration of how race and racism are produced, reproduced, and resisted from a Latin American perspective. We will examine a conception of race that is often ambiguous, hybrid, and fluid, yet coexists with deeply entrenched forms of racism. We begin by tracing the origins of racial formations to the colonial period, focusing on how race and religion became intertwined. The course then investigates Latin America's role in the medicalization of racialized bodies, particularly in the context of nation-building projects. We will analyze how racism has operated during periods of political violence, authoritarian rule, and transitions to democracy. Given the region's vast heterogeneity, we will critically examine "Latin America" as a category and use representative case studies to explore how race is mediated through signifiers such as education, gender, geography, occupation, dress, language, and religion—while ultimately being inscribed on and through the body. Students will explore Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies, and reflect on how the legacies of colonial and state violence persist but are contested. The first half of this course provides an overview of historical events and theoretical debates around the study of race in Latin America. The second half is dedicated to reading ethnographic work on questions of race. The selected books present cases in Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and of immigrants in the United States.
IRADAC Fellowship, Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC), The Graduate Center, CUNY, 2023-2024
Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Citizens and Scholars, 2022-2023
Mellon Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Original Sources, Council on Library and Information Resources, 2019-2020
Research Fellowship, Consortium for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, 2018-2019
Early Research Initiative Archival Research Grant, The Graduate Center, CUNY, 2017
Dr. Louise Lennihan Arts & Sciences Interdisciplinary Grant, The Graduate Center, CUNY, 2016
Doctoral Student Research Grant, The Graduate Center, CUNY, 2016
Five Year Graduate Center Fellowship, Graduate Center, CUNY, 2014-2019
Teaching Excellence Award, Linguistics Department, University of California San Diego, 2010.
Full Tuition Fellowship, Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2008-2010.
The Original Stain of the “American Man,” Histórica, forthcoming.
Grotesque Signs. Rethinking Latin American Indigeneity through the “Mongolian spot,” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, forthcoming.
Inscriptions and Omissions. Written Words and the Visualization of Orphans’ Bodies in late 19th-century Peru. Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, forthcoming.
From Blood to Skin: Race as “Stain” in Colonial and Republican Latin America. In Entre discurso y práctica: Ciencia, tecnología y salud en la Historia del Perú. Patricia Palma (Ed.). Lima: APHESCTS, Instituto Riva Agüero, 2024.