Doctoral program alum Dr. Lena Oak Suk (PhD, ’14) has published her first book, In the Darkness of the Cinema: Gender and Moviegoing in Early Twentieth-Century Urban Brazil, with Pittsburgh University Press. Focused on the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Suk’s work offers an innovative analysis of how movies and moviegoers reshaped gendered perceptions and gendered realities in urban Brazil at the beginning of the last century. Rielle Navitski (University of Georgia) praises In the Darkness of the Cinema as “an engaging account of how the movies transformed urban space and women’s participation in public life in Brazil.”

Suk is a research affiliate at the Institute of Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and Assistant Director of Investigator Skill-Building in the Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship & Creative Endeavor at UT. She completed her graduate training under the advisement of Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History.

Read the abstract of Suk’s monograph below, and find more information on Pittsburgh UP’s book page.

Gender and sexual morality, and their intersections with race and class, were central to the formation of urban Brazil in the twentieth century. In the Darkness of the Cinema takes a wide-ranging and innovative approach to gender and moviegoing culture in Brazilian society. By focusing on the flirtations and romances of the movie theater, as well as the intrigue and moral panic that they caused, Suk creates a rich portrait of spectatorship. Where women went to the movies, who they met, and what they did in the darkness were key questions that brewed among overlapping but disparate circles, from film intellectuals and filmmakers to legislators and public health officials, as well as the moviegoers themselves. Amassing sources located traditionally within film culture as well as outside of it, such as film magazines, interviews, comics, literature, and songs, Suk shows that movie theaters and moviegoers made an indelible mark on the urban landscapes of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.