Lee Bebout Talks Dynamics of White Desire at English Department Event March 9

Photo by Sujey Vega

Lee Bebout

The Department of English at the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is excited to announce the second event in its Spring Lecture Series, a talk by Lee Bebout of Arizona State University.

Bebout's lecture, titled "Deep in the Heart of Whiteness: White Desire, Country Music, and the Political Potential of Love," will take place Thursday, March 9, from 4 to 5 p.m. in Kimpel Hall 211.

In his talk, Bebout will discuss how representations of Mexican women in country music expose the dynamics of white desire. While many would describe white supremacy as charged with hate and degradation, Bebout demonstrates how "racist love" may be harder to tackle, for the seemingly ubiquitous erotic, exotic Mexicana of U.S. popular culture is often used to render white masculinity as both desirable and idealized. Bebout will also explore other models of transborder love that may be used to resist the logics of domination.

Bebout is an associate professor of English at ASU, where he is also affiliate faculty with the School of Transborder Studies and the Program in American Studies. He is the author of Mythohistorical Interventions: The Chicano Movement and Its Legacies (Minnesota 2011), which looks at the way myth and history contribute to political identity during the Chicano movement and postmovement era. He is also the author of Whiteness on the Border: Mapping the U.S. Racial Imagination in Brown and White (NYU 2016), a book that considers how representations of Mexico, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans connect with the concepts of both whiteness and Americanness.