First articulated in 2004, the Brazilian Studies Program is an interdisciplinary collaborative that brings together faculty and students interested in sharing their knowledge about Brazil at Indiana University. It works closely with the Portuguese Program, and consequently events surrounding literature and culture have been prominent. Since the 2017 imprisonment of former president Lula, the Program has also emphasized Brazilian politics and solidarity initiatives with Brazilian academics and activists. For more information, contact the Brazilian Studies Program coordinator, Professor Luciana Namorato lnamorat@iu.edu.
Brazilian Studies
Faculty
- Lee J. Alston, Ostrom Workshop
- Eduardo Brondizio, Anthropology
- Vania Castro, Spanish and Portuguese
- Della Cook, Anthropology
- Luis González, Indiana University Libraries
- William J. Mello, Labor Studies
- Luciana Namorato, Spanish and Portuguese
- Darlene J. Sadlier, Spanish and Portuguese
- Micol Seigel, American Studies and History
- Stephen Selka, Religious Studies
- Pravina Shukla, Folklore and Ethnomusicology
- Andréa Siqueira, International Studies
- Estela Vieira, Spanish and Portuguese
Courses
Students wishing to include a focus on Brazil are encouraged to contact us early in their academic career in order to avail themselves of all the opportunities available. Particularly strong degree granting programs on the Bloomington Campus are the Department of Spanish and Portuguese's programs, and the Department of African-American and African Diaspora Studies' programs. While no formal undergraduate or graduate program exists, Brazilian Studies offers a variety of courses and offers comprehensive knowledge of Brazil and Brazilian issues. Some recent courses offered include:
- HISP-P 290: Introduction to Portuguese: Arts and Culture
- HISP-P 317: Reading and Conversation in Portuguese
- HISP-P 400: Literatures of the Portuguese-Speaking World I
- HISP-P 401: Literatures of the Portuguese-Speaking World II
- HISP-P 410: Brazilian Cinema
- HISP-P 412: Brazil: The Cultural Context
- HISP-P 470: Poetry in Portuguese
- HISP-P 475: Theatre in Portuguese
- HISP-P 676: Machado de Assis
- HISP-P 751: Brazilian Literature: The Afro-Brazilian Experience
Past Events
Screening and discussion of the 2018 film O Processo (The Trial), on the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. Maria Augusta Ramos (documentary filmmaker)
"518 Years of Colonial Ghosts. "Alexandra Lucas Coelho (Portuguese author). Organized by the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese with CLACS support.
"Maps of True Places: Material Cartographies in the Work of Guimarães Rosa." Clara Rowland (Departamento de Estudos Portugueses, Universidade Nova de Lisboa). Organized by the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese with CLACS support.
"Bossa Nova Longplay: Getz/Gilberto after Fifty Years (or so)." Bryan McCann (Dept. of History, Georgetown University). Organized by the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese with CLACS support.
"Work until You Die: The Effects of the 2016 Coup on the Brazilian Working Class." William J. Mello (Dept. of Labor Studies, IU Northwest. Part of the El Foro lecture series.
"Bullets, Bulls, and Bibles: Jair Bolsonaro and the Rise of the Far Right in Brazil." (Bryan Pitts, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, IUB)
"Belly Dancing in São Paulo, Brazil: Using Dance and Video to do Ethnomusicological Research." (Erica Giesbrecht, Fulbright Visiting Chair in Brazilian Music, IUB)
Brazilian Literary Spring: "Cloro: The Genesis of a Novel." Alexandre Vidal Porto (Brazilian author). Organized by the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese with CLACS support.
Brazilian Literary Spring: "(in)visibilidades da Migrância: Refugiados nas Artes Plásticas e na Literatura Brasileira Contemporâneas." Leonardo Tonus (HDR en Études lusophones, UFR d’Études Ibériques et Latino-Américaines, Université Paris-Sorbonne). Organized by the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese with CLACS support.
"The Brazilian Political Crisis." Roundtable including Martin Delaroche (School of Public and Environmental Affairs, IUB), Vitor Martins Dias (Maurer School of Law, IUB), Bryan Pitts (Latin American and Caribbean Studies, IUB), and Elizabeth Stein (International Studies, IUB)
"Brazil in Transition: Beliefs, Leadership, and Institutional Change." Lee J. Alston (Ostrom Workshop, IUB). Part of the El Foro lecture series.
"Land Use and Environmental Diversity in Maranhão, Brazil." Maristela de Paula Andrade, Benedito de Souza Filho, and Ulisses Denache Vieira Souza (Universidade Federal do Maranhão).
"Conspiracy and Orgies: Sexuality, Anticommunism, and the Right in Cold War Brazil." Benjamin Cowan (Dept. of History, George Mason Univ.)
"Brazilian Folk and Popular Music for the Violin - Lecture Demonstration." Raimundo Nilton Silva (Escola de Musica de Brasilia and the IPFW Community Arts Academy - String Camp).
Other Resources
Devised by Latin American Studies librarian Luis González as a tool to support research in Brazilian Studies , Researching Brazil/Pesquisa no Brasil is both a bibliographic database and a gateway to online resources relevant to Brazil. The site provides a searchable index of Brazilian scholarly journals, as well as access to full-text dissertations from Brazilian institutions. Additional resources include directories of researchers and institutions, bibliographies, quantitative data sets, and selected web sites relevant to researchers.
Brasiliana in the Lilly Library: Darlene J. Sadlier, Professor Emerita in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, has compiled an annotated bibiliography of selected Brasiliana holdings from the colonial period to the 20th century. As part of a reissue of the 1972 Brazil catalogue, the first part of the publication is a digitized copy of the original catalogue. The second part, titled "Brasiliana at The Lilly Library," provides a broader view of pre- and post-independence materials from the library's collections, with a special eye to more recent acquisitions focusing on U.S.-Brazil cultural relations in the 20th century. Dr. Sadlier has also recently published a book on Lilly Library's holdings, including its Brazil-related items, available here.
CASEL is an interdisciplinary training and research center on the human dimensions of global environmental change. The current environmental crisis has made us aware of the need to "think globally, act locally" - yet this dictum is rarely carried out in research and training. The globalization of the environment crisis bears the risk of the research and training at universities being purely global in nature. This would fail to take into account the highly variable local causes of human activities or to discover sustainable solutions to the use, conservation, and restoration of human ecosystems. Although faculty and students associated with CASEL conduct interdisciplinary research on a variety of world regions, following the expertise of its founder, Professor Eduardo Brondizio (Department of Anthropology), the Brazilian Amazon is an area of emphasis.
BRASA is an international, interdisciplinary group of scholars who support and promote Brazilian studies in all fields, especially the humanities and social sciences. BRASA is dedicated to the promotion of Brazilian studies around the world in general, and in the United States in particular. BRASA organizes an international congress on Brazilian studies every other year. For information on the most recent congress, see BRASA XIV.
Online resources for researchers: Visit this page for information on indexes and catalogs, full-text retrieval databases, gateways, and audio-visual materials.
The Brazilian Embassy has extensive resources through their website on Brazilian culture, economy and finance, education, energy, environment, foreign policy, science and technology, tourism, and trade and investment. The Embassy also has an internship program in a variety of areas. These are usually three-month unpaid positions, either full-time or part-time, which can be renewed for an additional three months. Applicants are required to be fluent in both English and Portuguese and have a strong interest in Brazilian-related issues.