PORT 4660

Inventions of Brazil

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2016-2017.

Musician Caetano Veloso once claimed that while the United States is a country without a name (since "America" names, after all, the continent as a whole), Brazil, on the other hand is a name without a country.  Indeed, from the colonial era to the present, a wide range of intellectuals - in and outside Brazil - have dedicated a great amount of energy to theorizing, problematizing, idealizing, and otherwise inventing Brazil.  Through works of literary fiction, theory, economics, and visual materials, this course approaches the debates on the Brazilian dilemma from the 19th century to the present.  Materials range from classics such as Machado de Assis and José de Alencar, to early twentieth-century odernists such as Mário and Pswald de Andrade, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, all the way to Glauber Rocha, Hélio Oiticica, Roberto da Matta, Silviano Santiago, Villem Flusser, Ivan Santana, and Ricardo Lisias.

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