Brenda Umutoniwase (MA 2023) joined the Folklore Program at UC Berkeley after finishing her undergraduate degree from Cornell University in International agriculture and rural development and Africana Studies. A member of Sistah Circle Collective, a radical black feminist Collective based and doing work in Rwanda, she comes into her research with this community in mind. Her primary interests lie in interrogating how gender and sexuality are in constant interaction with culture within colonial spaces in East Africa (what’s commonly referred to as the post-colonial African State). With reference to Rwanda in particular, she seeks to study how folklore genres like wedding rituals, legends & folktales, songs, plays inform(ed) how gender and sexual identities are conceptualized, formed and upheld, and she hopes to do this through archival work. Her other interests are in studying how folklore is (re)produced within spaces of liminality and precarity such as statelessness, homelessness, refugee situations & immigration, and what role it plays in survival projects. Broadly, Brenda hopes to question culture, what it is/isn’t/could be, through a folkloric lens, and uncover ways to use it as a tool for and towards liberation of all oppressed people.
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Folklore
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