Global Arc

This course will introduce students to the history of slavery and race relations in modern Brazil and will explore how it resonates in present-day debates about citizenship. Students will read classical and recent historical works as well as primary sources in order to gain a critical and comparative understanding of slavery as an institution in the Americas, and its adaptability to local realities. Students will be introduced to methods of historical research, with a particular focus on digital history. Students will write papers tackling how the history of slavery has distinctively shaped ideas of democracy, human rights and social justice.

This course explores the supposedly "untranslatable" concept of saudade. We will consider its political, economic, cultural and aesthetic manifestations and social implications through analysis of literary and sociological texts, music, cinema, and more from across the Lusophone world. Topics will include im/migration and the transnational experience, music and performativity, the role of nostalgia in politics and the colonial experience, national mythmaking and depictions of utopia. Particular attention will be paid to the prevalence of saudosismo in popular culture, where classical texts and forms often make surprising appearances.

This interdisciplinary course focuses on the city of São Paulo, with its vibrant cultural life, its complex social interactions, and its deep urban history. Through the analysis of literature, film, music, theatre, visual arts, and architecture, students will gain an immersive understanding of Brazil's most populous and diverse city. Topics include: The 1922 Week of Modern Art; cultural anthropology; the creation of the University of São Paulo; social movements; center and periphery.

An introduction to the richness of Brazilian film, this course explores major cinematic movements: from the Cinema Novo, to critically acclaimed documentaries and more recent commercial successes like City of God. Recurrent and emerging trends will be discussed (e.g., the destruction of the Amazon, urban violence, literary adaptation, musical expressions). Prerequisite: POR 208 or instructor's permission. One three-hour class.

Through literature, film, music, and archive, we will explore how race, as a form of human hierarchization, shaped and connected the history, cultures, and social realities of Brazil, Portuguese-Speaking Africa (Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, among others), and Portugal. We will examine how racial discourses changed throughout time and operate today in those spaces through key historical moments and topics such as slavery, colonization, race-mixing, fascism, military dictatorship, decolonization, migration, contemporary urban life, Indigenous thought, and Afro-futurism. Readings and discussions will be entirely in English.

This course offers a close listening to some of the most important Brazilian songs. Each class will be dedicated to one or more artists (composers and interpreters) offering an in-depth study of their songs and styles. Samba, Bossa Nova, Tropicália, and other movements will be studied through listening and lyrics training, and a weekly writing blog in Portuguese. Each student will build a repertoire of favorite songs to be presented in a final collective podcast.

Brazilian cinema has experienced a major resurgence since the late 1990s, exhibiting a wide array of thematic concerns and formal approaches: from critically acclaimed documentaries to the commercial success of "City of God." After an introduction to the Cinema Novo of the 1960s in the context of other contemporary movements, this course will focus on how more recent filmmakers have engaged questions of Brazilian cinema's relationship to the state, to social conditions, and to the international marketplace. Recurrent and emerging trends will also be discussed (e.g. a preoccupation with the Amazon, urban violence, literature, and music).

Among the questions that define the nature of nonfiction film, one of the principal ones is the question of responsibility towards those one wants to film. Documentaries about the "enemy" or the "adversary" constitute the most extreme manifestation of this problem, and can therefore be seen as the most radical testing ground for nonfiction film. This seminar will explore the dilemmas faced by documentary filmmakers who choose to represent the enemy, be it a war enemy, a class antagonist, a political opponent, a social monster, a dictator, a torturer, or an ambivalent friend.

This course will focus on the work of the best known Brazilian writer, Machado de Assis (1839-1908). We will read and study one of his masterpieces, [Epitaph of a Small Winner] (1881), some of his short tales, as well as his last romance, [Counselor Ayres' Memorial] (1908). Through the analysis and discussion of recent critical texts on Machado's work, we will be able to perceive that some of the most disturbing social issues of contemporary Brazil can already be found in his plots, thus raising questions on the relationship between literature and society, present and past, writing and politics.

This course will examine the role played by spatial forms and representations, topographies, landscapes, and urban cities in Luso-Brazilian poetry. The Lisbon of Fernando Pessoa, the landscapes of Recife, Sevilha in the poems of João Cabral de Melo Neto, and the modernity of Brasilia as conceived by the Concrete avant-garde will be the main focus of analysis. The course will be taught in Portuguese, but translations of the texts in English and Spanish will be available.