Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown

The life and work of Fernando Pessoa served as inspiration for many filmmakers and films. The latest issue of Pessoa Plural, no. 25, is a special issue dedicated to cinema that engages with the work and figure of Pessoa.

To celebrate the release of the special issue of Pessoa Plural, some filmmakers agreed to grant access to their films for free during the month of June. Other films already had free and permanent access.

Discussions of the films will take place on June 10, 11, 12, and 13 from 1:00-3:00 COT. They will be broadcast online.

For more information and to register, visit facart.es/pessoa-e-o-cinema

Facultad de Artes y Humanidades Universidad de los Andes CNPq Jeronimo Pizarro

We are pleased to announce that the latest issue of Pessoa Plural, no. 25, is now online. This special issue is dedicated to cinema that engages with the work and figure of Pessoa. The issue will be accompanied by an online film cycle, "Pessoa e o cinema." The films will be available online until July 10, 2024, and there will be online discussion events from June 10-13. More information is available on the website (https://literatura.uniandes.edu.co/evento/ciclo-pessoa-e-o-cinema/).

Pessoa Plural—A Journal of Fernando Pessoa Studies (ISSN: 2212-4179) is an international peer-reviewed scholarly journal dedicated to studies of Fernando Pessoa. It is published jointly by the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University, the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Warwick University, and the Department of Humanities and Literature of the University of the Andes.

The journal publishes essays, documents and commissioned book reviews. All submitted articles are initially screened by the editors. If judged pertinent to the journal, then they are submitted to a process of double-blind review. It is our aim to publish the best scholarship and criticism on Fernando Pessoa, regardless of theoretical methodological or ideological perspective.

You can access the current issue on the Brown Digital Repository at this link: https://doi.org/10.26300/j2dj-x992.

We hope you will share with anyone who might be interested. We would like to extend our special thanks to the contributors, editors, and editorial team, and to everyone at the Brown Digital Repository for putting this online: thank you for all of your hard work! It's a beautiful issue.

Parabéns to the class of 2024!
On Sunday, May 26th, the Department of Portuguese & Brazilian Studies celebrated the graduations of undergraduate concentrators Nicholas Gabriel Miller and Julia Emília Terra-Salomão, class of 2024, as well as Renato Amado Barreto’s Ph.D. completion.

Nicholas Gabriel Miller graduated with honors in the concentration and wrote his honors thesis on Soccer in the Amazon Rainforest. He conducted research for his thesis in Brazil in January of this year and was a recipient of the John and Clarice Scarritt Fund. Nicholas was awarded the Karina P. Lago Memorial Prize in recognition of his outstanding performance as a concentrator in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies.

Julia Emília Terra-Salomão graduated magna cm laude. She was awarded the Karina P. Lago Memorial Prize in recognition of her outstanding performance as a concentrator in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. She was also awarded the Armanda Silva Prize in recognition of the exceptional service she has provided to the Portuguese and Brazilian Studies department.

Renato Amado Barreto defended his Ph.D. in June 2023. His doctoral dissertation was entitled “A Guerra Cultural Conservadora no Brasil Contemporâneo e Sua Expressão Literária.” His thesis director was Prof Luiz Valente.

Parabéns to our graduates, Julia Emília Terra-Salomão, Nicholas Gabriel Miller, and Renato Amado Barreto, PhD!

PEN (Performance & Exhibit Night) is an event at the end of each semester celebrating the achievements and talents of students in the Department of Portuguese & Brazilian Studies.

Student groups showcased their language skills and creativity in a series of varied and dynamic exhibitions and performances!

Afterwards POBS students, faculty, staff, and friends enjoyed some comes and bebes together! Thank you to our amazing Patrícia Sobral, teaching assistants, and Mary Ellen Woycik for organizing another fun-filled PEN night!

On May 6, students in the Prof Luiz Valente’s graduate seminar POBS 2500, “Tales of the Sertão,” ended the semester with the symposium “Sertão/Sertões,” during which they presented their final papers.

Mariana Mota presented “O sertão vai virar q***r: leituras-outras de Bacurau”; Heloisa Krüger Barreto presented “Chuva feminina no sertão bem masculino: leituras dissidentes do sertão”; Luís Fernando Moreira da Costa presented “Miscigenação e formação política: uma análise comparada de Grande sertão: veredas e Populações meridionais do Brasil”; and Maria Frigotto presented “O enigma e a potencialização dos afetos em Guimarães Rosa.”

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the final Bate-Papo of the semester of Friday, 5/3!

On Monday, 4/29, Prof Onésimo Almeida delivered his final lecture in his course on the Shaping of Worldviews. Several members of his family were in attendance.

Prof Almeida received his MA (1977) and PhD (1980), both in Philosophy, at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, where he has been teaching Portuguese Cultural and Intellectual History since 1975, and as a Full Professor since 1991. From 1992 to 2003 he was Chair of the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. Brown University awarded him the Royce Family Professorship for Teaching Excellence in 2023.

Image credits: Shara Almeida

We’re excited to announce the publication of the latest issue of the Journal of Lusophone Studies!

The Journal of Lusophone Studies is the official journal of the American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA), and its executive editor is Jeremy Lehnen, a senior lecturer in the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown. It is peer-reviewed and published twice a year. In keeping with the founding principles of APSA, the Journal of Lusophone Studies strives to foster the expansion and diffusion of knowledge on the peoples and cultures of Portuguese-speaking countries and diasporas. It achieves this by publishing the scholarly work of APSA members. The journal is open-access.

You can find the latest issue (vol. 8, no. 2) at the journal’s official website (https://jls.apsa.us/index.php/jls). This special issue, entitled “Journeys through the Lusophone Transatlantic Matrix: Essays in Memory of Fernando Arenas,” contains in memoriam essays, articles, creative works, translations, and book reviews in Portuguese and English.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for yesterday's (4/29) lunch talk with Ondjaki Angola on literature and cinema. Thank you especially to Ondjaki for joining us and to Fundação Luso-Americana for co-sponsoring the event!

Thank you to everybody who joined us yesterday, 4/17, for Dr. José Lingna Nafafé's talk, "Evidence that Demands a Verdict and the Verdict that Demands Abolition: Prince Lourenço da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionists’ Case in Rome and the Vatican Response for Universal Justice, 1684-1686." Dr. Lingna Nafafé shared his research into the highly-organized, international-scale legal case for ending slavery in the seventeenth century headed by Angolan nobleman Lourenço da Silva Mendonça, and the Vatican's verdict on the case: a universal condemnation of the Atlantic slave trade that the Christian states of Europe nevertheless failed to honor.

Special thanks to Dr. Lingna Nafafé for sharing his research, to Dr. Gabriel Rocha for organizing the event, and to our co-sponsors, Brown University History Department, The Brazil Initiative at Brown, and The Africa Initiative at Brown at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

Thank you to everyone who joined us to hear FLAD visiting professor Duncan Simpson's talk, "Clientelism, Propaganda and Social Control: Letters of Ordinary Citizens to Salazar in the mid-1960s" on Friday 4/12! A special thanks to Dr. Simpson and to our co-sponsor, Fundação Luso-Americana.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for Pizza e Papo this past Friday! We hope to see you at the next Bate-Papo on Friday, May 3 from 12-2 at 159 George Street! 😊

Speakers of Portuguese, as well as current and prospective students, are invited for all to join us at Papos for snacks and conversation.

NEW Fall '24 course offering from Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown - POBS 1601W: Challenging the Colonial Complex!

This course maps anti-colonial, postcolonial and decolonial theory and praxis in the Portuguese-speaking world. It investigates a wide range of writings, while bringing forth an array of artistic, cultural, and media practices of resistance. The course is designed to claim the centrality of these voices and to encourage students to think visually – through, not just about, images, and through, not just about, art.

Reading, watching, listening, and discussing intensely and with care will be the basis of our academic work as we explore the meanings and practices of decolonization in the Portuguese-speaking world.

By the end of the course, you will be able to:
1. Possess a thorough knowledge of the major theories, concepts, and themes of anti-colonial, postcolonial and decolonial critique and praxis in the Portuguese-speaking world.
2. Understand how these frameworks have been used (or not) to analyze and understand the dynamics and tensions within the Portuguese empire and its legacies and spectralities.
3. Effectively apply this conceptual framework to perform your own cultural analyses of different objects.
4. Expand your critical awareness of the most pressing social and political challenges of our time through visual and artistic practices.

This course runs on Tuesdays from 4:00-6:30 pm and is taught by Inês Beleza Barreiros.

For more information and to register, visit https://cab.brown.edu.

It's almost time to register for Fall '24 courses! Consider learning Portuguese or expanding your knowledge of Portuguese and Lusophone cultures with these courses this Fall!

For more information and to register, visit https://cab.brown.edu.

Note: POBS0630F Unveiling Herstories will be available on C@B soon!

NEW Fall '24 course from Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown University - POBS/LACA 1601Y: Indigenous Arts and Activism in Brazil!

This course will examine current forms of intersection between Indigenous arts and political activism, focusing on Brazil. Which possible futures do Indigenous arts envision?

Topics include Indigenous creative interventions in the colonial archive, approaches to repatriation and Indigenous curatorial practice, critical perspectives on cultural appropriation and the importance of centering Indigenous voices, public space interventions by Indigenous artists, and the overlap between Indigenous arts and anti-racism as well as Indigenous arts and environmental activism. We will give special focus to the work of Indigenous artists, authors, and filmmakers engaged in activism and advocacy for Indigenous rights.

The course will feature Indigenous artists, writers, activists, and scholars as guest speakers, offering firsthand perspectives. Utilizing campus resources, the seminar will serve as a unique platform for an in-depth examination of present-day Indigenous arts within the Brazilian context.

This course will run on Thursdays from 4:00-6:30 pm and is co-taught by Leila Lehnen and Jamille Pinheiro Dias.

For more information and to register, visit https://cab.brown.edu.

Patrícia and Rex Parker (Class of '74) have made a generous donation to assist undergraduate students interested in learning Portuguese and pursuing learning, internship, and/or volunteer opportunities in Brazil in the summer of 2024.

Interested students should send an application (letter of interest describing their project and a budget) to Prof. Leila Lehnen ([email protected]) by May 6th, 2024. Students will be notified by May 14th whether their application was successful.

We're excited to announce the publication of our latest issue of Gávea-Brown!

Gávea-Brown: A Bilingual Journal of Portuguese-North American Letters and Studies is published by the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University. The journal was founded in 1980 as part of Gávea-Brown Publications, a publishing house dedicated to making Portuguese literature and culture better known in the English-speaking world. The journal’s mission is to publish works relating to the Portuguese experience in North America. The scope is broad, including editorially reviewed academic articles, documents, interviews, translations, book reviews, and creative works. In 2018, the Gávea-Brown journal, until then a leading journal published only in print, shifted to online publication in order to expand access to Portuguese-North American literature and studies.

You can find the latest issue (48) online by visiting our website (link in our bio) or at: https://doi.org/10.26300/vvrd-0v47

We would like to send our special thanks to our editors, copy editors and everyone at the BDR for putting this online and congratulations to all of our authors. Happy Reading!

On Monday, March 18th, the Department of Portuguese & Brazilian Studies received a visit from a government delegation from Guinea-Bissau. The delegates included Ms. Sharon Antonieta Rosa Hassan Hussein BOUDAHIR, a professor of labor law at the National School of Administration; Mr. N’gome DA SILVA, the President of the Pedagogical and Scientific Council at the Universidade Amilcar Cabral; Mr. Agostinho Baiem FANDE, Director of the National School of Administration; and Mr. Julio MARIO SIGA, the Chief of Cabinet and Secretary of State for Higher Education in the Ministry of Education. The delegates met with several department faculty members to connect and discuss potential collaboration before touring the campus with two graduate students.

The delegation was hosted by the Affairs Council of Rhode Island, a non-partisan group dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of the world, its peoples, cultures, and languages.

Thanks to everyone who attended Friday's Bate-Papo event! We hope to see you all at the next Pizza e Papo on Friday, April 12 from 12-2 at 159 George Street!

Speakers of Portuguese, as well as current and prospective students, are invited for all to join us at Papos for snacks and conversation.

Please join us at our 3/15/24 Bate-Papo from 12-2pm.

Speakers of Portuguese, as well as current and prospective students, are invited for snacks and conversation in the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, at Meiklejohn House (159 George Street). We will meet in room 102.⁠⁠

Come and join the fun!

Please join us on Friday, March 15th from 4:00-6:00 pm at 135 Thayer (MCM), Room 101 for a film and video artists’ workshop/lab with visual artist, sculptor, and filmmaker, Jaime Lauriano.

About the director: Jaime Lauriano is a visual artist, sculptor, filmmaker. His works call us to examine the structures of power contained in the production of history. In audiovisual pieces, objects and critical texts, Lauriano shows how violent relations maintained between the institutions of power and State control - such as the police, prisons, embassies, borders - and subjects shape the subjective processes of society. Thus, his production seeks to bring to the surface historical traumas relegated to the past, confined files, in a proposal to collectively revise and rework history.

This event is cosponsored by Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown, The Brazil Initiative at Brown, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown University, Center for Language Studies at Brown University, and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.