Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Rice University, specializing in race, family, and African Diasporic studies. Her transnational research explores how family dynamics, socialization practices, and emotional bonds contribute to both the reproduction of and resistance to systemic oppression. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic research in Brazil, her recent books highlight the significant and often under-examined role of emotion in socialization. She has introduced concepts such as affective capital and affective captivity to conceptualize how the unequal distribution of affection and emotional manipulation within families can reflect and perpetuate broader societal inequities, especially in relation to gendered forms of anti-Blackness. Not limited to Brazil, her research and teaching explore how global anti-Blackness shapes the structural position and affective experiences of Afro-Latin Americans, Afro-Latinxs, and African Americans with a focus on Black women and families. She is currently working on a book entitled, The Affective Architecture of Domination, which seeks to develop a broader framework for understanding how emotional dynamics—both intimate an institutional—are integral to the structures of power, control, and domination.

At Rice University, Hordge-Freeman holds a joint appointment in the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS), which complements her interdisciplinary research interests. In 2013, she launched the Imagine Blackness AI project and exhibition in collaboration with her husband, artist McArthur Freeman, exploring the intersection of Black identity, speculative fiction, and technology. In 2024, she co-directed the award-winning Journey Towards Justice documentary with several colleagues, capturing students' emotional journeys through the Civil Rights Trail in Alabama. She will be launching the inaugural Journey Towards Justice course at Rice in Spring 2025, and she plans to launch a similar summer program in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

PUBLICATIONS

Books:

Hordge-Freeman, Elizabeth. 2022. Second Class Daughters: Black Brazilian Women and Informal Adoption as Modern Slavery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Winner of the 2024 American Sociological Association, Section on Sociology of Human Rights, Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Book Award
• Winner of the 2024 American Sociological Association, Section on the Sociology of Emotions Outstanding Publication
• Co-Winner of the 2024 Brazilian Studies Association, Roberto Reis Book Prize (senior scholar category)
• Co-Winner of the 2023 American Sociological Association, Section on Race, Gender, and Class Distinguished Scholarship

Hordge-Freeman, Elizabeth. 2015. The Color of Love: Racial Features, Stigma, and Socialization in Black Brazilian Families. Austin: The University of Texas.

• Winner of the 2018 American Sociological Association, Section on the Body & Embodiment, Best Publication Award
• Co-Winner of the 2017 Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, Charles Horton Cooley Book Award
• Winner of the 2016 American Sociological Association, Section on Emotions Recent Book Contribution Award
• Selected as Honorable Mention, Harlem Book Fair/Phyllis Wheatley First Non-Fiction Book Award

Co-edited books:

Noles Cotito, Mariela and Hordge-Freeman, Elizabeth (eds.) 2024. Ciudadanías invisibles: Miradas en torno a la afroperuanidad y la negritud. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Universidad del Pacífico.

Mitchell-Walthour, Gladys and Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman. eds. 2016. Race and the Politics of Knowledge Production: Diaspora and Black Transnational Scholarship in the USA and Brazil, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Select Publications:

Hordge-Freeman, Elizabeth. 2024. Disruptive Silences: Affect and Embodied Experiences of Systemic Oppression, pp. 144-155. Moving from the Margins: Life Histories on Transforming the Study of Racism, eds. Margaret Andersen and Maxine Baca Zinn, CA: Stanford University Press.

Abella, A.L.D., Hordge-Freeman, E., Conner, K., Armstrong, L., Wilson, R. and Landers, M., 2024. Parent and Staff Insights to Understanding Challenges with Engaging Black Families in Early Childhood Programs. Journal of Child and Family Studies, pp.1-18.

Hordge-Freeman, Elizabeth and Angelica LoBlack. 2021. “Cops only see the brown skin, they could care less where it originated”: Afro-Latinx Perceptions of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement, Sociological Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1177/0731121420961135.

Hordge-Freeman, Elizabeth and Edlin Veras. 2020. “Out of the Shadows, Into the Dark: Ethnoracial Dissonance and Identity Formation in Afro-Latinx Families.” Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649219829784.

Hordge-Freeman, Elizabeth. 2018. "Bringing your Whole Self to Research: The Power of the Researcher’s Body, Emotions, and Identities in Ethnography, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, Volume 19, pp. 1-9, https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406918808862.

Wingfield, Adia, Hordge-Freeman, Elizabeth and Lynn Smith-Lovin. 2018. “Does the Job Matter? Occupational Differences in Racialized Stress,” In Race, Identity, and Work In Research in the Sociology of Work, Volume 32, ed. Ethel L. Mickey and Adia Harvey Wingfield, pp. 197-215. Emerald Publishing Ltd.