Gladys Mitchell-Walthour is a political scientist specializing in Brazilian racial politics. Her work examines Afro-Brazilian racial identification, discrimination, political behavior and opinion.

She will discuss her latest book, “The Politics of Blackness: Racial Identity and Political Behavior in Contemporary Brazil” (Cambridge University Press), on Wednesday, Nov. 29th at noon in 225 Friedl on Duke’s East Campus. 

Mitchell-Walthour, an assistant professor of public policy and political economy in the Department of Africology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, uses an intersectional approach to analyze the impact of the experience of race on Afro-Brazilian political behavior in the cities of Salvador, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. Taking into account the experience of racial discrimination, she seeks to explain Afro-Brazilian political behavior with a focus on affirmative action policy and Law 10.639 (requiring that African and Afro-Brazilian history be taught in schools).

Mitchell-Walthour has also co-authored two edited volumes as well as the book, Brazil’s New Racial Politics (2010), with Bernd Reiter. She has published articles in Racial and Ethnic Studies (2010), The National Political Science Review (2011), and Latin American Politics and Society (2009) among others.

Mitchell-Walthour holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago, a master of public policy from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in political science and African & African-American Studies from Duke University. In addition, she was a visiting research fellow at Duke’s Social Science Research Institute (SSRI), and a Samuel DuBois Cook Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Gender in the Social Sciences (REGSS) at Duke.