Fellow Focus: Verónica Zebadúa-Yáñez

2024-25 Visiting Faculty Fellow Verónica Zebadúa-Yáñez is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Women’s Studies at Spelman College.

In this conversation with Communications & Outreach Coordinator Karl-Mary Akre, Veronica discusses her work's exploration of the question of freedom and how her Fox Center fellowship helped her find community in Atlanta. 

KARL-MARY AKRE: Hi, Verónica! Thank you for taking the time. I'd love to start by learning more about your entrypoint into your current project. How did you come to do the research that you're currently doing?

VERÓNICA ZEBADÚA-YÁÑEZ: I've been interested in the question of freedom for a few years now. I wrote my dissertation on the concept of freedom in Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir. For several reasons I decided to set that work aside for a while—I’ll revisit it later. My dissertation also touched on the question of genre, specifically the intersection between biography and political theory. I came to my current project, a book manuscript titled Experiments in Sovereignty: A Political Theory of Feminist Freedom, via three interests: freedom, violence, and genre.

Following my beloved Beauvoir, I take freedom as a project and a lived experience. I love doing political theory that crosses genres. And I worked on gendered violences for several years at the United Nations. I joined all these interests to think and theorize a feminist freedom—sovereignty in a feminist key—that is affirmative, imaginative, rageful and even violent. I find it in theoretical works, in feminist literature, and in some forms of feminist mobilization, as experiments. I think these experiments as a form of feminist power that has been overlooked by political theorists that take freedom is the opposite of sovereignty and that focus on vulnerability, care, and healing.  

And how does that question of freedom through lived experience intersect with the Fox Center’s 2024-25 theme "Democracy: Past, Present, Future"? 

I read somewhere, maybe in an interview with Bolivian feminist María Galindo, that there cannot be democratization without ‘de-patriarcalization’ as well as no decolonization without de-patriarchalization. Societies can’t call themselves democracies, and we should not call them democracies, if violences against women and gender diverse people continue to be normalized and justified every day, everywhere in the world, and if impunity is the rule. At the same time, though, feminisms—particularly in Latin America, where they are the strongest social movement—are showing that there is another way of existing in the world, that we can create projects and spaces of freedom, and that fighting for that, literally and figuratively, is urgent and necessary.

How would you say the fellowship at the Fox Center impacted your work and process?

This fellowship has been truly fantastic. The community of fellows, who are all approaching the question of democracy from different perspectives, has been very enriching for my research. Although we’re all in the humanities, our vocabulary, theories, and approaches can differ. I enjoy sharing my research with people outside my discipline, and I've found it incredibly valuable to receive feedback and criticism on my work. Having another feminist political theorist in the cohort, Silvia Fedi, and several of us doing feminist work, has been great. I was looking for an intellectual community here in Atlanta, and the Fox Center provided that. It's a space of hope and inspiration in a world that's falling apart. I truly admire everyone I've met here; I learned so much from all my ‘fellow fellows’.

With the Center’s interdisciplinary environment in mind, how do you think about your own fit within discipline and your own relationship to it? What is the role of discipline in your work?

My intellectual anchor is political theory and feminist political theory, but I like thinking across genres and working with writers who are not typically considered political theorists. I guess I’m not disciplined by my discipline. I draw on and am inspired by hardcore philosophical and theoretical texts, but also by biographies, autobiographies, literature and film, real-world protests, artistic practices. I like exploring how different things can come together as a political theory.

Do you have any words of encouragement for other faculty from Atlanta-area institutions on how the Fox Fellowship could contribute to their work as well?

I think this is a great opportunity, especially for those of us who are not based in research universities. I’m at Spelman College, where we don't have spaces like the Fox Center. Taking advantage of the Robert W. Woodruff Library and other Emory resources has also been useful. Open and supportive conversations about our and other scholars' work are really so invaluable.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.