From Alabama to Bahia, Hordge-Freeman examines emotion
One night in Brazil, Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman was driving back from a late dinner with friends when a military police officer stopped her and ordered her out of her car. As he aimed a rifle at the side of her head, she said she remembers standing there, shaking, unable to hear anything but his voice — not even her friends shouting at her. This anecdote is one of many Hordge-Freeman shares in her first book “The Color of Love,” which examines how racial hierarchies are reproduced and challenged in Black Brazilian families.
A sociologist of emotion, Hordge-Freeman said she works across national and linguistic boundaries to advance racial justice and research race, gender and class. Before her doctoral studies in sociology at Duke University, however, Hordge-Freeman began her undergraduate years at Cornell as a pre-medical student studying Spanish and biology.
“I felt like everybody was pre-med,” Hordge-Freeman said. “And while [Spanish and biology] seem separate … I had imagined learning Spanish and eventually creating medical clinics across Latin America. That was my vision.”
Hordge-Freeman said a transformative study abroad experience in Spain inspired her to stray from her plans in medicine, sparking curiosity about different cultures.
“[Spain] changed everything for me,” Hordge-Freeman said. “I realized that where my passion really rested was in my curiosity about different cultures [and] histories and using my language skills to really bridge the gaps of … cultural understandings across [continents].”
In her final year, Hordge-Freeman said studying Brazil through her Latin American Studies concentration sparked a lasting interest in the country’s history — a passion that continues to inform her research today.
“I learned that [Brazil] had transported the largest number of enslaved Africans to its shore, more than any other country — 10 times as many as the United States,” Hordge-Freeman said. “When I learned about that history, I thought, ‘Brazil seems fascinating.’”
Hordge-Freeman said her interest in exploring the legacy of Brazil’s colonial slavery led to her 2022 book “Second-Class Daughters: Black Brazilian Women and Informal Adoption as Modern Slavery.” The book compiles her research on the lives of filhas de criação, or raised daughters — women informally adopted into affluent families that live as unpaid domestic workers in conditions akin to slavery — conducted over 10 years primarily in the state of Bahia.
“I would travel back and forth to Brazil [and] maintain relationships with participants online through WhatsApp Messenger,” Hordge-Freeman said. “I ended up meeting the participants … because I would see these women in the shadows of the families that I would meet in Brazil.”
While working on “The Color of Love,” Hordge-Freeman said her research trajectory changed after meeting a raised daughter for the first time.
“[I] was renting a room in a very nice condominium in Salvador, and I woke up at night for a glass of water,” Hordge-Freeman said. “I walked by the teenage son’s room, and I saw an elderly black woman sleeping … on the floor next to his bed with [a] sheet that barely covered her … and that was really the first interview that sparked my interest in understanding these relationships.”
While the interviews with these women could last hours, they often required a degree of secrecy, Hordge-Freeman said.
“I would have to secretly meet with them so that their families did not know that they were talking to me,” Hordge-Freeman said. “When we were able to get away … sometimes it would almost be as though they were having a cathartic experience where they just wanted to get everything out. So in one interview [that lasted for] 10 hours straight, I said, ‘Okay, we have to stop … you need to eat. I need to eat.’”
While previous researchers understood that young Black, Indigenous and impoverished girls were taken into affluent families as unpaid domestic workers under the guise of adoption, Hordge-Freeman said that her book challenges the assumption that these young girls eventually ran away.
“[My research] highlights the lives of women who are 50, 60 and 70 years old who … [are] in these exploitative relationships for decades,” Hordge-Freeman said. “The other insight is perhaps an unexpected one, and that’s the role of emotions in domination and exploitation.”
Central to Hordge-Freeman’s research on raised daughters is her concept of “affective captivity,” which describes how emotions can maintain power structures, she said.
“Even when these women are being abused … they don’t leave for a number of reasons,” Hordge-Freeman said. “They are often not allowed to go to school. They often don’t have networks outside of the family. They are deprived of all of these important material resources. But in addition to that, they also feel a type of loyalty and a sense of gratitude towards the family … and so their desire to remain morally good by expressing gratitude is also a contributing factor.”
Hordge-Freeman said that one of the most difficult parts of her research has been navigating what it means to be a Black woman in Brazil. While there, she is assumed to be a Black Brazilian woman and often faces the associated mistreatment, but she said that perceptions of her change dramatically once people discover she is American. Her encounter with police underscored this complexity, she said.
“[H]e’s asking me all these questions — ‘Where are you from? What are you doing here?’ — and I’m responding in Portuguese,” Hordge-Freeman said. “I hear [my friends] say, ‘Elizabeth, speak in English,’ and so I say to the officer, ‘I’m Elizabeth … I’m here conducting research.’
“The officer has no idea what I’m saying, but [when] he realizes … I’m from the United States, [he] literally bows to me and says, ‘My apologies. I want you to be able to go back to your country and tell them that we treated you with dignity and respect.’ He only responded that way because he thought I was Black American, and the question is … what’s the treatment for Black Brazilian women who don’t have an American passport?”
In July 2024, Hordge-Freeman joined Rice’s sociology department and Center for African and African American Studies as an associate professor. Previously, she spent 12 years at the University of South Florida in her hometown of Tampa. James Elliott, professor and Chair of Sociology, said the department was excited to welcome Hordge-Freeman.
“As a globally recognized, award-winning scholar working at the crossroads of comparative racial studies, family and social processes, she brings tremendous intellectual talent to campus,” Elliott wrote in an email to the Thresher. “We felt like we won the lottery when Dr. Hordge-Freeman accepted our offer to come to Rice.”
Hordge-Freeman will teach her first course at Rice, SOCI 318: Journey Towards Justice, in the Spring 2025 semester, modeled after a Maymester course she taught at the University of South Florida.
After taking Hordge-Freeman’s Journey Towards Justice course in May 2024, Evita Garcia, a senior at the University of South Florida, said it allowed her to engage directly with racial equity, activism and historical injustices.
“[Dr. Hordge-Freeman’s] dedication to fostering both intellectual growth and empathy has left a lasting impact on my approach to advocacy and leadership,” Garcia wrote in an email to the Thresher. “I now serve as the advocacy chair for the Tampa Bay Latin Chamber of Commerce, where I work to advance the interests of underrepresented communities, and as a legislative intern, focusing on policy change with respect to social and environmental justice. Dr. Hordge-Freeman’s teachings have become a foundation for my work in these roles.”
During spring break, students in Hordge-Freeman’s course will travel to Alabama to visit key sites of the civil rights movement. As Hordge-Freeman prepares to guide Rice students through a journey towards justice, she says she encourages undergraduates to forge their own paths.
“Have the courage to pursue the activities [and] interests that reflect your passion, regardless of what other people are thinking,” Hordge-Freeman said. “If you follow who you are, you’re going to be successful. That is success.”
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