Fellows
As part of the Brazil Initiative, honorary fellows are appointed in order to conduct independent research on any aspect of Brazil-U.S. relations. The duration of the appointment varies from one month to one year. Fellows should provide evidence of support from their institutions in Brazil and submit a working plan at least six months prior to affiliation with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The fellow should obtain an on-campus sponsor, make a contact in a UW-Madison department, or otherwise indicate an affiliation. During the appointment fellows may be affiliated with another US university, government agency, or non-government organization. Fellows are encouraged to participate actively on campus life during their UW appointment and, following their return to Brazil, submit a report on their career developments. Applications should include a statement of purpose, updated c.v., a letter from the host department at the UW, and evidence of support from their institutions.
Spring & Fall 2015
Darien Lamen is an A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for the Humanities and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Yale and a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Pennsylvania. Darien has received fellowships from the Social Science Research Council (2008-2009) and the American Council of Learned Societies (2012-2014) in support of his research on popular music in the Brazilian Amazon and circum-Caribbean. His research interests range from labor and political economy to social poetics and discrepant cosmopolitanisms. Recently, he has published on lambada and the libidinal economies of northeastern Brazil (in Sun, Sea, and Sound, Oxford Press); the social poetics of circum-Caribbean musical contraband (Latin American Music Review); and “Cyborg Indian” futurism in an Amazonian sound system scene (The Global South, forthcoming). Darien also maintains a multimedia ethnographic archive on the history of sound systems in Belém, Brazil, and has worked as a scholar consultant for Afropop Worldwide’s Hip Deep radio program. He is currently working on finishing his first book-length monograph, tentatively entitled “Producing the Future on an Amazonian Cultural Frontier: Musical Workers and the Work of Popular Music in Belém do Pará.”
Fall 2014 & Fall 2015
Luca Bacchini is Assistant Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Literature at the University of Bologna, Italy. His research interests include: Brazilian popular music,culture and politics during the military regime, Brazilian culture abroad and contemporary literature. Bacchini received his Ph.D in American Studies from the University of Rome 3 in 2006 after which he began his career at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ teaching graduate courses in Brazilian Language and Literature. He is a Research Fellow of the Projeto República: núcleo de pesquisa, documentação e memória at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; Scientific and Didactic Program Director of the Núcleo de Cultura Ítalo-Brasileira in Valença/Rio de Janeiro; member of the board of FIBRA (Italian and Brazilian Cultural Foundation). Bacchini is no stranger to Wisconsin. In 2012 he was a Visiting Scholar and Invited Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Invited Lecturer at Tulane University and at the University of Florida. In addition, he participated in the April 2014 University of Wisconsin-Madison, Brazil Initiative-organized “50th Anniversary Symposium of the Military Coup in Brazil”, presenting a paper titled “Protestar é preciso, reprimir não é preciso. Música popular e resistência”. He is editor of Maestro Soberano. Ensaios sobre Antonio Carlos Jobim (Editora UFMG), forthcoming in 2014. Currently, he is finishing a book on Chico Buarque’s exile in Italy.
Fall 2013-Spring 2014
Christopher Dunn is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Tulane University where he holds a joint appointment in the African and African Diaspora Studies program. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from Colorado College, and both a Master’s in Brazilian Studies and a Ph.D. in Luso-Brazilian Studies from Brown University. His research focuses on culture and politics during the period of the dictatorship, popular music, race relations, and black culture in Brazil. He is the author of Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture (University of North Carolina Press, 2001), which has been translated into Portuguese and Japanese. He is co-editor with Charles Perrone of Brazilian Popular Music and Globalization (Routledge, 2001), and with Idelber Avelar of Brazilian Popular Music and Citizenship (Duke UP, 2011). Professor Dunn received an NEH Fellowship for the 2013-2014 academic year to complete a book-length study of the post-tropicalist Brazilian counterculture and related artistic expression of the 1970s.
Fall 2012
João Roberto Faria is a Professor of Brazilian Literature at the University of São Paulo – the same institution from which he obtained both his Masters and Doctorate degrees in the same field. From 2006 to 2009 and from 2011 to the present, Faria has been the Head of the Department of Classical and Vernacular Literature in the Philosophy Department. He holds a B.A. in Portuguese and English from the State University of São Paulo. In addition, Faria did two Post-Doctorate degrees in France: the first from 1991-1993 at the Centre de Recherches sur le Brésil Contemporain (EHESS) and the second in 2003 at the Université Paris X-Nanterre.
In the Fall of 2000, Faria was a Tinker Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught a graduate course. He is a member of NUPEBRAF [Center for Research Brazil-France] of the IEA [Institute of Advanced Studies]. In addition to his position as a researcher of the CNPq since 1993, he was also awarded a scholarship from August 2012 to February 2013 to conduct research on forms of comedy and of the comical at UW-Madison. Faria’s expertise lies within the arts with a specialty in theater, including Brazilian theater and its history, Brazilian playwriting, Machado de Assis, and José de Alencar.
The collection, “Dramaturgos do Brasil” [“Brazilian Playwrights”], which he directs, published between 2002 and 2006 by Martins Fontes, contains four volumes prepared by Faria on playwrights álvares de Azevedo, Aluísio Azevedo, Emílio Rouède, Machado de Assis, and José de Alencar, as well as on Realist Theater.
João Roberto Faria is the author of the following books: (1987), O Teatro Realista no Brasil: 1855-1865 [Realist Theater in Brazil: 1855-1865] (1993), O Teatro na Estante [Bookcase Theater] (1998), and Ideias Teatrais: o Século XIX no Brasil [Theatrical ideas: 19th Century Brazil] (2001) that received an award (“Prêmio Especial”) in the category of “Theater: The best of 2001” from The São Paulo Association of Art Critics [APCA]. Alongside those accomplishments, Faria has also edited the following books: Décio de Almeida Prado: um Homem de Teatro [Décio de Almeida Prado: A Man of the Theater] (1997) in collaboration with Flávio Aguiar e Vilma Arêas; José de Alencar: Melhores Crônicas [José de Alencar: The Best Chronicles] (2003); Ao Correr da Pena, de José de Alencar [José de Alencar] (2004); Dicionário do Teatro Brasileiro: Temas, Formas e Conceitos [Dictionary of Brazilian Theater: Themes, Forms and Concepts] (2006) along with J. Guinsburg and Mariângela Alves de Lima; Do Teatro: Textos Críticos e Escritos Diversos, de Machado de Assis [Machado de Assis: From the Theater: Critical Texts and Various Writings] (2008); and O Espelho, de Machado de Assis [Machado de Assis: The Mirror] (2009).
In 2012, Perspectiva published the first volume of História do Teatro Brasileiro: Das origens ao teatro profissional da primeira metade do século XX [History of Brazilian Theater, I: From its Origins to Professional Theater in the First Half of the 20th Century], which Faria edited and for which he wrote four chapters. The second volume is currently in print.
Spring and Summer 2011
Renelson R Sampaio holds degrees in Physics from the University of Minas Gerais (1973), advanced studies in Mathematical Physics from the University of Brasília (1974/75), a Masters degree in History and Social Studies of Science (1979) and a PhD in Economics of Innovation from SPRU (1986) from Sussex University, England. In the public sector he has worked in planning and public policies for science and technology at the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade- MDIC (1981/82), at the Planning Office of the Presidency of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development – CNPq (1982/85) and as Deputy Planning Secretary of the Ministry of Science and Technology – MCT (1985 / 88). From 1981 to 1989, while working for the Brazilian Federal Government, Dr. Sampaio was in charge of international projects and missions involving long-term planning and prospective studies in science and technology, sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and The Organization of American States (OAS). In the private sector he has worked in a high-tech, small-business consultant firm (1989/91), focusing on researching strategic information in technology. Following that, he was involved in the industrial sector and in the area of information technology services. During the period between 1998 and 2006, when he worked at the Euvaldo Lodi Institute of the State of Bahia (IEL/BA), Brazil, he was responsible for designing and developing the RETEC – Network Technology system of Bahia. The RETEC is a network system running through the internet that integrates specialized technical services and information with technological demands from SMB firms. In the year 2000, sponsored by the IEL/BR, from the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), RETEC was set up in several states in Brazil. He has also participated in the task force working group (2002/04) in planning, developing and setting up the Brazilian Services for Technical Answers – SBRT, sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT). Since then, this service has been been implemented all over Brazil on a nation-wide basis. Dr. Sampaio has been back to academic activities on a full-time basis since 2006, and he is currently a Professor of Graduate Programs (MS and PhD) at the SENAI – CIMATEC Center, in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. His research interests lie in two areas: Innovation at the level of the firm, particularly focusing on processes of creation and diffusion of organizational knowledge, and Local Innovation Systems (LIS) studies, focusing on the context of its social, economic and political environment from a multidisciplinary perspective. At UW-Madison, Dr. Sampaio is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology, working with Professor Erik Olin Wright.
2008-09
Prof. Dr. Wilson Almeida is Dean of International Relations and Director of International Relations at the Catholic University of Brasília, Brazil. During his stint as the first honorary fellow of the Brazil Initiative, Professor Almeida gave two lectures: “Las relaciones de Brazil con los paises sudamericanos en el contexto de una guerra por recursos” and “Ethanol Diplomacy: the new relationship between Brazil and the United States.” Since then he has written two articles that have been published as part of the Georgetown University CLAS working papers series.