Brazil Initiative Programming Archive – Lectures – LACIS

Lectures

Tuesday, April 12, 2016 12:00pm, 206 Ingraham Hall

“Dilma Rousseff, Political Crisis and the Role of Women in Politics in Brazil”

Presented by Pedro dos Santos, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Luther College

The election of Dilma Rousseff in 2010 marked a historical moment in Brazil’s political history. As the first woman president of the country, Rousseff’s gender has played, and still plays, a complicated role in explaining her rise to power, her role as a leader, and her policy decisions. The current economic and political crisis in Brazil only adds to the complexity of Rousseff’s tenure as president.

In this talk Dr. dos Santos will discuss how gender has played a role in the election of Dilma Rousseff, what her presidency means to women in the country, and how President Rousseff negotiates her own gender identity with the general public and political elites in the country. The talk will also provide a background on the current economic and political crises that has plagued Brazil for the last two years.

About the presenter: Pedro G. dos Santos holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Kansas and is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Luther College. His research focus is Brazilian politics, with a special interest on women’s representation in the country. He has two main research projects right now, one exploring Dilma Rousseff’s impact on women’s representation in Brazil, another dealing with the impact of Brazilian electoral institutions on the election of women to legislative positions. He has co-written two book chapters on Dilma Rousseff’s presidential campaign, and has published articles on Latin American Politics and Society and Politics & Gender.

Co-sponsored by: LACIS, the Brazil Initiative and the International Division.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016 12:00pm, 206 Ingraham Hall

“New State Activism in Brazil: Continuing Concerns and New Challenges”

Presented by Nave Visiting Scholar Diogo Coutinho, Professor, Universidade de São Paulo & David Trubek, Professor of Law, Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison

In his talk. Prof. Coutinho will discuss continuing concerns and explore new challenges from a legal and institutional perspective. To erect a solid developmental state, Brazil urgently needs to engage in some sort of democratic planning the neither Lula nor Dilma managed to put into practice. And to make that possible, lawyers able to assess and reinvent political, economic and social institutions are more necessary than ever, he argues.

About the presenter: Diogo R. Coutinho is a Professor at the University of São Paulo (USP), and a research fellow at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP). He holds a master from the London School of Economics and Political Science (2002) and a doctorate from the University of São Paulo Faculty of Law (2003). He participated in the Cambridge University Programme on Rethinking Development Economics – CAPORDE (2007) and was a researcher at FGV São Paulo Law School. Prof. Coutinho was also a visiting professor at the Center for Transnational Legal Studies – CTLS (London, 2009) and at IPEA, the Brazilian Institute of Applied Economic Studies. He has written on law and development, administrative and economic law, and regulatory policies in Brazil.

Co-sponsored by: LACIS, Global Legal Studies Center and the University of Wisconsin Law School, as well as the Brazil Initiative and the International Division.

Monday, April 4, 2016, 1:00pm, 260 Bascom Hall

“Favela, inc.: Violence as Spectacle in Contemporary Rio de Janeiro”

Professor Erika Robb Larkins, University of Oklahoma

Erika Robb Larkins is Wick Cary Assistant Professor of Brazilian Studies in the Department of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. An anthropologist by training, her work focuses broadly on the study of violence and inequality in urban Brazil. Her book, The Spectacular Favela, on which this talk is based, was published University of California Press in 2015. She is currently working on an ethnography of the private security industry in Rio. Larkins received her Ph.D. (2011) and M.A. (2007) in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She also holds a M.A. (2004) in Latin American Studies from the University of Chicago and B.A. (2002) in History and Religious Studies from Indiana University.

This talk examines the political economy of spectacular violence in Rocinha, one of Rio’s largest favelas. Erike will tell the story of how traffickers, police, cameras, tourists, and anthropologists/researchers come together to create what she calls the “spectacular favela.” In Rocinha, traffickers perform power through conspicuous displays of wealth and force, brandishing high-powered guns, gold jewelry, and piles of cash and narcotics. Police, for their part, conduct spectacular raids reminiscent of action films or video games, wearing masks and riding in enormous armored cars called “big skulls.” Favela violence is also produced as a marketable global brand: “Favela, Inc.” Images of the favela circulate constantly in local, national, and global media, creating sensational, spectacular images of violence and order that mask more “everyday” forms of prejudice and inequality. While favela violence is projected in disembodied form through media, Rocinha is also sold as embodied experience through the popular practice of favela tourism. Bringing these different elements of favela spectacle together, Erika will explore how entangled forms of violence shape everyday life and how that violence is, in turn, connected to the market economy.

Sponsored by: the Brazil Initiative, Latin American Caribbean & Iberian Studies, Department of Anthropology, and the International Division

Tuesday, February 16, 2016 12:00pm, 301 Agriculture Hall

“Property Arrangements and Soy Governance in the Brazilian State of Mato Grosso: Implications for Deforestation-Free Production”

Presented by Lisa Rausch, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The production of soy is one of the most important economic activities in the Brazilian Amazon, though the expansion of this industry has come at the cost of millions of hectares of forests and grasslands. Since 2006, the private firms that buy and trade soybeans globally have assumed a key role in ensuring that the soy sector complies with forest protection policies, including the Soy Moratorium and public policies banning the use of illegally deforested land. We use evidence from field interviews and a GIS of property boundaries and soy production areas to describe the private sector governance process and to characterize the variety of property arrangements underlying soy production in Mato Grosso, the leading soy producing state in the Brazilian Amazon. Our results highlight how the evolving complexity of property arrangements could create opportunities for deforestation to enter the soy supply chain under the current governance scenario. To achieve greater reductions in overall deforestation, soy governance should be made more comprehensive so as to include all properties used to produce soy including rentals, account for the entire property rather than only the area planted to soy, and include more transparent verification systems.

Sponsored by: the Land Tenure Center, LACIS, Brazil Initiative and the International Division

Wednesday, February 10, 2016 4:00pm, 313 University Club

“‘Little Mothers’ and ‘Robust Babies’: Motherhood, Breastfeeding, and Childrearing Literature in 20th Century Brazil”

Victoria Langland, Associate Professor of History and Portuguese, University of Michigan

Langland’s talk examines guidance on breastfeeding directed at women through childrearing books and popular magazines in early to mid-20th century Brazil. As other scholars have demonstrated, state officials and medical professionals in this period directed extensive maternal and infant health programs at poor and working-class women, including efforts to encourage breastfeeding. Through very different means, middle- and upper-class women also received strong messages about the importance of breastfeeding as a maternal duty. By examining both sets of discourses together we can begin to understand popular understandings and practices about maternity, women’s bodies, and infant nutrition, and their transformations over time. This talk is part of a larger study that looks at changing ideas about breastfeeding and the meanings of national public health more broadly that help explain Brazil’s rise as a world leader in human breast milk banking.

Victoria Langland holds a joint position in History and Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. She specializes in twentieth-century Latin American history, especially the Southern Cone, and writes about dictatorships, gender, the uses of memory, student and other social movements, and, more generally, the intersections of culture and power. She is the author of Speaking of Flowers: Student Movements and the Making and Remembering of 1968 in Military Brazil (Duke University Press, 2013) and the co-editor of Monumentos, Memoriales y Marcas Territoriales (Siglo XXI, 2003).

Sponsored by the A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of the Center for the Humanities and Institute for Research in the Humanities. Co-sponsored by the Brazil Initiative and the Department of History.

Free and open to the public.

Friday, November 20, 2015 12:00pm, 260 Bascom Hall

“Rio de Janeiro: Mega-Events and the Dynamics of Urban Change”

Theresa Williamson, PhD, Founder of Catalytic Communities

What does pre-Olympic Rio teach us about poor urban planning and development policies, as well as effective community organizing and resistance? What can we learn from Rio’s favelas about how to organize, and how not to organize, our own communities and what would truly inclusionary policies look like? Case studies here include the communities of Vila Autódromo, Favela do Metrô, Indiana, Horto and Providência.

Catalytic Communities founder Theresa Williamson is an outspoken advocate and informant on behalf of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas in the face of current fast-paced transformations. In May 2004 Williamson received her Ph.D. from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. She has published articles from her dissertation and related research in Progressive Planning, The Journal of Urban Technology, etc. Raised in the Washington, D.C. area, she is a dual Brazilian and British citizen and resides in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Sponsored by: the Brazil Initiative, Latin American Caribbean and Iberian Studies, and the International Division

Tuesday, November 10, 2015 12:00pm, 206 Ingraham Hall

“Racial Versus Class Discrimination, Occupation, and Skin Color in Brazil”

Gladys Mitchell-Walthour, Visiting Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Department of Africology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

This is a co-authored paper that examines Afro-Brazilians in given occupations, acknowledge class and/or color discrimination. Because occupation is one aspect of daily life we believe that different occupations explain variation in whether Afro-Brazilians admit they have experienced discrimination based on skin color or class. One’s occupation often serves as an indicator of one’s socioeconomic status. Our expectation is that those in high status occupations will not acknowledge class discrimination given that prestigious occupations would mark one’s higher class status. On the other hand, we expect those in lower status positions to acknowledge discrimination based on class rather than color.

Dr. Gladys Mitchell-Walthour is a Political Scientist specializing in Brazilian racial politics. Her work examines Afro-Brazilian racial identification, racism, and political behavior and opinion. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Africology at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. She was the 2013-2014 Lemann Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. Her co-authored book with Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman Race and the Politics of Knowledge Production: Diaspora and Black Transnational Scholarship in the USA and Brazil will be published in 2016 (Palgrave MacMillan). She co-authored the book, Brazil’s New Racial Politics (2010), with Bernd Reiter, and has published articles in Politics, Groups, and Identities (2015), Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies (2014), Racial and Ethnic Studies (2010), The National Political Science Review (2011), Latin American Politics and Society (2009), Opinião Pública (2009), Review of Black Political Economy (2009), and Studies in Latin American Popular Culture (2008). Dr. Mitchell-Walthour earned the MA and PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago, the Master of Public Policy from the University of Michigan, and a BA in Political Science and African & African-American Studies from Duke University.

Sponsored by: The Brazil Initiative, Latin American Caribbean & Iberian Studies.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015 4:00pm, 336 Ingraham Hall

“Public Health in Brazil, Uruguay, and other Latinamerican countries: a comparative view”

Jorge Papadópulos, Vice-Minister of Education and Culture, Uruguay

(Spring 2011 Tinker Visiting Professor of Public Affairs)

In addition to his role as the Vice-Minister of Education and Culture of Uruguay, Jorge Papadópulos is a researcher at the Centro de Informaciones y Estudios del Uruguay (CIESU). His MA is in Sociology from the Instituto Universtário de Pesquisas (Rio de Janeiro) and his PhD is in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh. He was a Tinker Visiting Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Spring 2011. Papadópulos also served as Director of the Uruguayan Banco de Previsión Social (BPS), was a part of the Junta Nacional de Salud de Uruguay (JUNASA), and a member of the Comisión Honoraria Administradora del Fondo Nacional de Recursos, among other positions. He has published books and articles on social security, higher education, gender, health, and the welfare of vulnerable groups.

Sponsors: the Brazil Initiative, Latin American Caribbean & Iberian Studies, the International Division

Friday, October 23, 2015 4:30pm, 260 Bascom

“On Writing Songs in Southeastern Brazil 1980-1990” (with live performance to follow)

Professor Carlos Sandroni, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco

Professor Sandroni will discuss trends in songwriting in São Paulo, Brazil, during the 1980s. Composers as Arrigo Barnabé, Luiz Tatit and Itamar Assumpção best represent what was then called the “Vanguarda Paulista” movement. Their work proposed some innovations in songwriting that didn’t fit into the mainstream Brazilian popular music of the time, or “MPB.” However, these innovations were influential in some circles. Sandroni, as a composer then living in Rio de Janeiro, was influenced by their work. Following the lecture, Sandroni will sing and play some of his own music.

Lecture in English and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Brazil Initiative, Latin American Caribbean and Iberian Studies and the International Division.

Monday, September 14, 2015 4:00pm, 260 Bascom

“Brazilian Jews in Israel: Subjectivities in (a) Conflict”

Professor Miguel Vale de Almeida, Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa (ISCTE), Lisbon, Portugal

This talk will address key aspects of Professor Vale de Almeida’s current fieldwork in Israel where he is working with a network of Brazilian Jews who migrated to Israel and became citizens. This research addresses the issue of Jewish and Israeli identity and how the State promotes and shapes subjectivities that were initially formulated elsewhere and that were faced with multiple ‘choices’ – Brazilian, Diasporic Jewish, Zionist or non-Zionist, etc. The role of the impact of the conflict will be discussed, as well as the ‘Lusophone’ identity of the informants.

Professor Vale de Almeida is an anthropologist, LGBT activist, writer and painter, and a prominent intellectual in Portugal and Europe. His research interests include gender, sexuality, body politics, race, ethnicity, ethnopolitics, Post-colonial studies, creoleness and the Portuguese diaspora. He is the current editor-in-chief of the journal Etnográfica. He is the author of five monographs, including two that have been translated into English, namely An Earth-Colored Sea. Race, Culture and the Politics of Identity in the Post-Colonial Portuguese-Speaking World (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2004), and The Hegemonic Male: Masculinity in a Portuguese Town (Oxford and Providence: Berghahn Books, 2004).

Thursday, April 30, 2015 4:00pm, 260 Bascom

“Housing Policy and Socio-Spatial Displacement in Pre-Olympics Rio de Janeiro”

Meg Healy, Senior, Geography & Political Science

As Rio de Janeiro prepares to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, the Brazilian government has invested tens of millions of dollars in its first large-scale public housing program. Minha Casa Minha Vida (in English, “My House My Life”) is tasked with constructing 100,000 housing units in Rio by 2016, representing a key component of the city’s pre-Olympics urban revival effort. Families forcibly removed from their homes to make way for the development of Olympic infrastructure will occupy approximately half of this new housing stock. Rio is not the first Olympic host to be criticized for displacing residents nor will it likely be the last. An estimated 2,000 individuals were displaced in preparation for the 2014 Games in Sochi, while at least 1.5 million people were displaced before the 2010 Games in Beijing. While considerable literature has investigated mega events and corresponding displacement, further analysis of Brazilian housing policy illuminates the complex dynamics between the Brazilian state and the International Olympic Committee in promoting socio-spatial displacement. This research investigates the role of Minha Casa Minha Vida in enabling processes of urban displacement in pre-Olympic Rio and argues that critical assessment of local housing policies is essential to understanding the legacy of the 2016 Summer Olympics and reduce the risk of replicating the same social inequities in future host cities.

Sponsored by: The Brazil Initiative, Latin American Caribbean & Iberian Studies & Division of International Studies

Monday, April 27, 2015 4:00pm, 206 Ingraham Hall

Department of Spanish and Portuguese 2014-2015 Luso-Hispanic Literary and Cultural Studies Lecture Series presents…

“The Poetics of Aging in Laís Bodanzky’s Chega de Saudade (2007)

Peggy Sharpe, Professor of Portuguese and Spanish, Florida State University

Bio: Peggy Sharpe is Professor of Portuguese and Spanish at Florida State University, where she teaches courses in Portuguese language, culture, film, and literature, as well as Latin American Literature in Translation. Her research interests focus on gendered perspectives of major historical and social change in Brazil from the 19th century to the present, in particular the emergence of women writers, thinkers and film directors in Brazil.

Abstract: Brazilian directors have depicted female protagonists at various stages of the life cycle– from the age of innocence up through what Portuguese speakers refer to a terceira idade [the third age]. Drawing from the work of contemporary critics whose reflections on aging and gender have become central to the discourse on critical age theory, this presentation explores the ways in which the constructs of age and gender are configured in Laís Bodanzky’s award-winning film Chega de Saudade (2007).

Lecture in English and open to the public.

Sponsors: The Jay C. and Ruth Halls Visiting Scholar Fund, the Anonymous Fund of the College of Letters & Science, and The Brazil Initiative of the Division of International Studies

Tuesday, April 7, 2015 12:00pm-1:00pm, La Follette Conference Room, 1225 Observatory Dr.

“Building Policy Analysis Capacity in Brazil”

Leonardo Secchi, Professor of Public Policy and Administration, Santa Catarina State University, Brazil

Professor Secchi will talk about the development of policy analysis as a professional activity and as a field of knowledge in Brazil, presenting its limitations, potentialities, and discussing alternatives to build policy analysis capacity and improve public decision-making in Brazil. He has a Ph.D. in political studies from the University of Milan – Italy, professor of public administration and public policy at Santa Catarina State University – Brazil, and currently is a postdoctoral honorary fellow in policy analysis at La Follette.

Sponsored by: La Follette School of Public Affairs

Friday, March 27, 2015 4:00pm, 260 Bascom Hall

Department of Spanish and Portuguese 2014-2015 Luso-Hispanic Literary and Cultural Studies Lecture Series presents…

“Botanic Tropes in Latin American Imagination”

Professor Paulo Moreira, Yale University

Paulo Moreira is the author of Modernismo localista das Américas: Os contos de Faulkner, Guimaraes Rosa e Rulfo (Belo Horizonte: Editora da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2012). He has published scholarly articles and reviews on Octavio Paz and Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Mário de Andrade and Jean Toomer. He has also published a poetry volume called Quatro Partes and his poems and short stories have appeared in Brazilian literary magazines and journals. Currently he is working on the translation of a collection of Faulkner’s short stories to Portuguese. His broad research interests include: Brazilian, Mexican and American 20th Century Literatures, Comparative Literature, Cinema, Poetry, Short Story, Modernism, Regionalism, and translation.

Lecture in English and open to the public

Sponsored by Jay C. and Ruth Halls Visiting Scholar Fund and the Anonymous Fund of the College of Letters & Science

Co-sponsored by the Brazil Initiative of the Division of International Studies

Tuesday, March 17, 2015 12:00pm, 206 Ingraham Hall

“Politics, Development and Cultura Popular in São Luís, Maranhão, Brazil”

Brendan Loula, MA student in Ethnomusicology.

The presentation will be a discussion of some of some of the more visible cultural manifestations in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, especially the Afro-Brazilian dance Tambor de Crioula and the musical-theatrical tradition of Bumba-Meu-Boi. More specifically, Brendan will be talking about how cross-class participation, government recognition, and outside funding are changing the staging and performance of these traditions. While Maranhão is little known outside of the Northeast of Brazil, it is regionally known for both its wealth of cultural traditions and its high degree of poverty. Using videos, photos, and recordings that he gathered during a month stay in the capital city of São Luís, Brendan will give attendees a glimpse at the cultural variety of the region, and point to some of the issues that he seeks to clarify.

Brendan Loula is a graduate student in ethnomusicology here at UW-Madison, and is currently finishing his MA thesis, which focuses on the labor practices of West African griots, or musician-historians. He is basing this project on his experiences living in The Gambia for two years while serving as a health volunteer in the Peace Corps. Looking toward his doctorate, Brendan has begun conducting preliminary research in Northeastern Brazil in the under-studied region of Maranhão. As a practitioner of the Brazilian martial art/dance tradition of capoeira and a part-time accordionist, Brendan has had spent years learning about Northeastern Brazilian music and culture. For this next project in Maranhão, he is interested in the ways in which music and dance traditions become a resource for marginalized communities, markers for regional identities within contemporary nation states, and a sites of contact, conversation, and compromise between outside actors and cultural insiders.

Sponsored by: Latin American Carribbean and Iberian Studies

Saturday, March 14, 2015 11:00am-12:30pm, The Lake Mendota Room, Dejope Hall, 640 Elm Dr., Madison, WI

Kaleidoscope 2015 Conference Keynote:

“Problematizing Textual and Visual Representations of Amazonia: Euclides da Cunha, Alberto Rangel, and José Eustasio Rivera”

Professor Leopoldo Bernucci, University of California at Davis

Friday, March 13, 2015 3:30pm, 180 Science Hall.

Yi-Fu Tuan Geography Lecture Series presents…

Environmental Governance and the New Amazonian Frontier in São Felix do Xingu, Brazil

Professor Marianne Schmink, University of Florida

São Felix do Xingu has received widespread media attention as one of Amazonia’s “new frontiers” of rapid deforestation, landgrabbing, violent conflicts, and slave labor regimes. In response, federal authorities acted decisively with a series of environmental governance shocks. This talk reveals perspectives of people in key groups of local producers /urban supporters, regarding impact of the measures, and sustainable development strategies being proposed by municipal government and partners.

Thursday, February 12, 2015 4:00pm, 260 Bascom.

Piracy and the Materialities of Digital Circulation in Brazil

Alexander Sebastian Dent, Associate Professor of Anthropology, The George Washington University

Intellectual Property relies on an ideology of circulatory legitimacy that argues for the alignment of production and reception within consumer economies. However, IP is not the first, nor the only such ideology. In this talk, Alexander Dent analyzes the urgency that drives the policing of “piracy” through ethnography of an NGO which polices violations of IP in film and music. It illustrates how IP’s circulatory legitimacy engages with other, localized legitimacies – specifically, those associated with: objects of religious and political devotion, censorship during Brazil’s military dictatorship, and embarrassing propensities to “work around” the law. This way of analyzing IP is crucial for anthropologists since consumer economies rely upon it more and more, and because its policing is receiving increased support from governments and corporations around the world.

Sponsored by the A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of the Center for the Humanities and Institute for Research in the Humanities.

Co-sponsored by the Brazil Initiative of the Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program.

Friday, November 7, 2014, 3:30pm, 260 Bascom.

Public Lecture, Professor Maria José Somerlate Barbosa, “Dramatic Devices in Lispector’s Prose”

Professor Barbosa received her PhD in Luso-Brazilian Language and Literature and British and American Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1990. Barbosa is currently a Professor of Luso-Brazilian culture, literature, and Portuguese language. Barbosa’s research focuses on authors such as Clarice Lispector, Erico Verissimo, Adélia Prado, and Edimilson de Almeida Pereira and includes themes such as gender, class, aging, and race. In 1996 Barbosa published Clarice Lispector: Spinning the Webs of Passion and in 2001 she translated the book to Portuguese as Clarice Lispector: Des/fiando as teias da paixão. In addition, Barbosa has published numerous articles and book chapters.

Sponsored by the Brazil Initiative, the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, and Latin American Caribbean and Iberian Studies

Monday, October 27, 2014, 12:00pm-2:00pm, 206 Ingraham Hall

Theresa Williamson, Ph.D., “Favelas at the Vanguard: Rethinking our Assumptions in Sustainable Development.” (with film)

Catalytic Communities (CatComm) founder Theresa Williamson has become an outspoken and respected advocate and informant on behalf of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas in the face of current fast-paced transformations. In May 2004 Williamson received her Ph.D. from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. Entitled Catalytic Communities: The Birth of a Dot Org. She has published articles from this dissertation and related research in Progressive Planning, The Journal of Urban Technology, etc. Williamson received her undergraduate degree in Biological Anthropology from Swarthmore College. Raised in the Washington, DC area, she is a dual Brazilian and British citizen and lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Thursday, November 7, 2013, 4:00pm, 1163 Mechanical Engineering

“New Reasons to Preserve the Amazon Rainforest”

Marcos Heil Costa, Associate Professor of Agricultural Engineering, Universidade Federal de Viçosa.

Historically, Amazon rainforest conservation was intended to preserve biodiversity and the homes of indigenous peoples, and to maintain carbon stocks. We now have reason to believe that climate regulation by rainforests is also important for conservation. Recent calculations without coupled climate-agrometeorological models and coupled climate-hydropower models have demonstrated that widespread removal of the Amazon rainforest may affect regional climate and have serious economic consequences. These may affect not only agricultural and hydropower, but also other economic activities.

Co-sponsored by the Nelson Institute Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the Office of Sustainability.

Monday, October 28, 2013, 3:30pm, 212 University Club

“Aquilombando: Rebellious Landscapes and Colonial Visuality”

Matthew Rarey, Art History, UW-Madison.

Quilombos – communities of self-emancipated or fugitive slaves – were ubiquitous accompaniments to Brazil’s history of plantation slavery. Nearly every quilombo that existed in Brazil during the colonial period met its end through invasion and razing at the hands of the Portuguese. I suggest one of the reasons for such repression was the presence of gardens and agricultural plots inside quilombos: fugitive practices that rendered visible colonial visuality’s use of gardening, plantations, and the institution of slavery as ways to naturalize imperial power. To make this argument, I focus on revealing moments of ambivalence on the nature of landscape and imperial authority, including an attempt in 1744 to “de-infest” the countryside of quilombos by cultivating all available land before the quilombos’ inhabitants could; a 1796 account of the destruction of the quilombos of Orobô and Andaraí that counts subsistence crops alongside captured slaves; and the 1763 map of the quilombo Buraco do Tatú, and the labeling of its gardens with a large “F,” the same mark branded into the flesh of captured fugitive slaves. As such, following Aimé Césaire’s poetic 1954 provocation, I re-cast quilombo asaquilombando – a noun-to-gerund shift in Portuguese that conveys “quilombo” as a dynamic mobile praxis that moves across cities, plantations, and the countryside, re-landscaping concepts of slavery, race, and imperial visuality along its way.

Sponsored by the Institute for Research in the Humanities.

Friday, October 25, 2013, 4:00pm, 260 Bascom Hall

“Memory’s Turn: Culture and Transitional Justice in Brazil”

Brazil Initiative Visiting Scholar Rebecca Atencio, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Tulane University.

In May 2012, Brazil inaugurated a national truth commission to investigate cases of political torture, murder, and disappearance that occurred during the period of military dictatorship (1964-1985). The national truth commission and two ongoing federal reparations programs are the most visible examples of how Brazil has been making a turn to memory, yet state policy is far from the only way that a society attempts to reckon with an authoritarian past. Another is through cultural production. This talk proposes a theory about how cultural works interact with state policies related to human rights memory in Brazil and presents an argument for why analyses of such state policies need to take cultural production into account.

This event is co-sponsored by the Brazil Initiative, the Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies (LACIS) program, the Division of International Studies and the Human Rights Program, supported by a UW-Madison Mellon Foundation grant for the advancement of area and international studies.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013, 12:00pm, 101 Brogden Psychology Building

“Salvador da Bahia: Economic and Social Aspects of a Proto-global City in Brazil, 1650-1750”

Presented in English by Christopher Ebert, Associate Professor Brooklyn College/City University of New York.

Second only to Lisbon in importance in the Portuguese Empire, and containing a large population of African slaves working in urban and portuary occupations, Salvador da Bahia was a key node in a proto-global economic system. However, the city of Salvador, the capital of Portuguese Brazil from 1549 to 1763, has often been understood as merely an appendage of one of South America’s largest plantation societies. It has seldom been analyzed during this period as an urban center in its own right or compared with the other great global port cities of its time. This brief examination of Salvador looks at the organization of its port and its position in global circuits of trade during a critical time of growth both in the city and in “Atlantic” economic systems in general. It shows that the dynamic of growth in Salvador was not rigidly dependent on production of tobacco and sugar in its hinterland, since it played a variety of roles as a maritime service center and redistribution hub for a variety of commodities that had global reach and were traded both legally and illegally.

Friday, May 3, 2013, 3:00pm, 212 University Club, 432 E. Campus Mall

A.W. Mellon World Literature/s Research Workshop: “Carioca Orientalism: Morocco in the Imaginary of a Brazilian Telenovela”

Waïl S. Hassan, Comparative Literature, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Sponsored by Center for the Humanities, Institute for Research in the Humanities (IRH), Global Studies, European Studies, African Languages and Literature, and the African Diaspora and the Atlantic World Research Circle

Friday, April 26, 2013, 3:30PM, 8417 Social Science Building

2013 Haller Lecture: “From Mosquitos to Marx: The Changing Dynamics of State and Society in Brazilian Land Reform”

Presented by Wendy Wolford, Robert A. and Ruth E. Poison Professor of Development Sociology, Cornell University

Sponsored by Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, LACIS, Tenure Land Center

Tuesday, April 23, 2013, 12:00PM, 206 Ingraham Hall

“Brazilian Cultural Economy as Political Economy: Superfluity and the ‘Productive Precariat’ in the ‘Post-Multiculturalist’ Moment”

LACIS Lunchtime Lecture Series

Darien Lamen, ACLS New Faculty Fellow in Ethnomusicology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This lecture is part of the Mellon Grant Lecture Series and will feature a catered luncheon from Willy Street Co-op on a first-come, first-served basis.

Co-sponsored by the Brazil Initiative and the Division of International Studies

Monday, April 15, 2013, 5:30PM, 494 Van Hise Hall

“Amerindian Perspectivism and Non-Human Rights”

Idelber Avelar, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Tulane University

The conceptualization of the Anthropocene renews the relevance of Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s Ameridian perspectivism, a theory based on the widespread Amerindian postulate of an originary state of indifferentiation between humans and animals. The abundance of Amerindian narratives in which animals, plants, and spirits see themselves as humans is analyzed as an anthropomorphic impulse that paradoxically contains an anti-anthropocentric potential, as “in a world where everything is human, being human is not that special.” The contrast between Amerindian anthropomorphism and Western anthropocentrism is further developed in the context of the recent Ecuadorian and Bolivian constitutions, which for the first time confer on animals, plants, and bodies of water the condition of juridical subjects endowed with rights. The conclusion points toward the notion of non-human rights as a necessary and urgent task in the era of the Anthropocene.

Co-sponsored by LACIS, the Brazil Initiative, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Thursday, February 28, 2013, 3:30PM, 3401 Sterling Hall

“From Casino to the Silver Screen: Women Performers in Modern Brazil, 1922-1946”

Kathryn M. Sanchez, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese

Sponsored by the Center for Research on Gender and Women. Part of the Women’s Studies Colloquium Series.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013, 12PM, 5230 Social Sciences Building

“For the English to Hear”: Pacifying the Soundscapes of Rio de Janeiro

A jobtalk by Alexandra Lippman, PhD candidate from University of California-Irvine

Monday, February 25, 2013, 12:00PM, 159 Education Building (on Bascom Hill)

“Occupying Land, Occupying Schools: Transforming Education in the Brazilian Countryside”

A job talk presented by Rebecca Tarlau, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and a candidate for a position in the political economy of education. Tarlau’s work focuses on the Brazilian Landless Movement, particularly on their educational initiatives.

Friday, February 15, 2013, 1:15PM, 8417 Social Science Building

“Go Back to Bahia!”: Constructing Socio-Aesthetic Hierarchies through Music Sponsorship in Pernambuco, Brazil

Falina Enriquez, PhD Candidate in Anthropology (University of Chicago)

Tuesday, February 12, 2013, 12:00PM, 5230 Social Sciences Building, 1180 Observatory Drive

“Imagining an Amazonian Caribbean: Popular Music, Marginal Mobilities, and Cosmopolitan Crossings in Belém do Pará, Brazil”

Darien Lamen

Wednesday, February 6, 2013, 12:15PM, 3470 Social Sciences Building, 1180 Observatory Drive

The Dynamics of Poverty in the Six Main Metropolitan Regions of Brazil (1998-2009): A Decomposition Analysis.

Izete Pengo Bagolin, Development Economics, Catholic University, Rio Grande, Brazil.

Sponsored by Institute for Research on Poverty and Sociology.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012 from 12:00PM to 1:00PM, 206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive

LACIS Lunchtime Lecture: “Policing as a Generator of Trust? Exploring the Pacification Police Unit in Rio de Janeiro” Presented by Marta-Laura Suska, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, UW-Madison Co-sponsored by the Brazil Initiative and the Division of International Studies.

Friday, October 26, 2012, 4:00PM, 206 Ingraham Hall

“De Romancistas, Avós, e Sem-Teto: Translators in Brazilian Literary History” Dr. Martín Gaspar, Lecturer, Spanish and Portuguese Sponsored by the Brazil Initiative and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Friday, October 19, 2012, 4:00PM, 336 Ingraham Hall

“A situação atual das pesquisas em teatro e literatura no Brasil: Um diálogo com os estudantes” Professor João Roberto Faria, University of São Paulo Fellow, Brazil Initiative, Fall 2012 Sponsored by the Brazil Initiative and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 12:00PM, 206 Ingraham Hall

“The Amphetamine of the People: The Mística of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra.” Presentation made by 2012 Joaquim Nabuco Award recipient Nicholas J. Barnes, doctoral candidate in Political Science. Sponsored by LACIS and the Brazil Initiative.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 12:00PM, 206 Ingraham Hall

LACIS Lunchtime Lecture: “Where have you been, Mr. Bim?’: Tom Jobim, cronista de Nova Iorque”

Presented in Portuguese by Professor Luca Bacchini, University of Rome, La Sapienza Sponsored by LACIS and the Brazil Initiative.

Monday, September 10, 2012, at 4:00PM, 206 Ingraham Hall

“‘O autor do meu livro não sou eu’: Moderno e pós-moderno na literatura de Chico Buarque” Professor Luca Bacchini, University of Roma, La Sapienza Sponsored by the Brazil Initiative and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

Friday, May 4, 2012 at 3:30PM, Conference Room, 354, in Agriculture Hall

Haller Lecture: “Tales of Two Brazilian River Basins: Multi-level Struggles for Practical Authority.” Professor Margaret Keck, Associate Professor, Political Science, Johns Hopkins University

Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 12:00PM, Memorial Union, TITU

“Thinking about Brazil in Today’s Global Environment” A lecture by visiting scholar Julia Sweig, Latin American Studies director at the Council on Foreign Relations. Sponsored by LACIS, the Mayor’s Office, the Madison Committee on Foreign Relations, and the Dane County Chapter of the United Nations.

Monday, April 23, 2012 from 3:00PM to 5:00PM, 212 University Club, 432 E. Campus Mall

“Racial Canibalism: Carmen Miranda and the Performance of White ‘Negritude’ on the Brazilian Stage of the 1930s” Prof. Kathryn Sanchez, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Monday, January 30, 2012 at 4:00PM, 140 Science Hall

Lecture: “Financializing Farmland: Institutional Investors and the Brazilian Countryside”Presented by Madelaine Fairbairn, PhD Candidate, Departments of Sociology and Community and Environmental Sociology, UW-Madison This talk is presented as part of the Land Tenure Center’s Spring 2012 Speakers Series

Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 5:00PM, 1309 Health Sciences Learning Center (HSLC), 750 Highland Ave

Lecture: “HIV Diversity and Drug Resistance”Presented by Amilcar Tanuri, MD, PhD, Professor Genetics, Institute of Biology, Dept. of Genetics, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Free parking after 4:30pm in lot 76 (parking ramp by Nielsen Tennis Stadium). The #80 campus bus stops in front of the Health Sciences Learning Center. Students, faculty, staff and community members are welcome.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 3:45PM, 1210 Medical Sciences Center (1300 Univ Ave)

Cari Williams Maes, Emory University “Gods in the Hands of Science: Puericultura and Child-Centered Policymaking in Twentieth-Century Brazil” This presentation explores the Brazilian variant of puericulture, a French-derived term for the “art and science” of raising healthy offspring. In the mid-twentieth century, the emphasis on puericultura dovetailed with concurrent efforts to define Brazilian national identity. Puericultural discourse and media likewise served as a unique platform for promoting racial egalitarianism among the nation’s youngest citizens.

Tuesday, October 18 to Thursday, October 20, 2011

Curti Lectures, History Department 4PM daily in 121 Pyle Center A series of three lectures by Professor Barbara Weinstein, Silver Professor of History at New York University and a former President of the American Historical Association.

Tuesday, October 18: Orientalism in One Country? Locating Modernity and Tradition in Twentieth-Century Brazil
Wednesday, October 19: “Fighting for its white man’s culture”: Race and Regional Revolt in São Paulo, Brazil
Thursday, October 20: Uneven Developments: The Racialization of Regional Disparities in Brazil and Beyond. Weinstein will share new research on the making of race and region in Brazil, the country with the second-largest African-descent population in the world.

Monday, October 10, 2011, from 4:00PM to 5:30PM, 206 Ingraham Hall

“The internationalization of higher education in Brazil” (including insights into changing Brazil-US higher education linkages)

Denise de Menezes NeddermeyerCAPES, Ministry of Education, Brazil

Tuesday, September 27, 2011 from 12:00PM to 1:00PM, 206 Ingraham Hall

Presentations made by 2011 Joaquim Nabuco Award recipients Giso Broman and Ian Carrillo. Giso Broman is a Master’s student in the School of Library and Information Studies at UW-Madison and will present his paper “The diversion of the São Francisco River: Lack of water and lack of democracy”. Ian R. Carrillo is a PhD Candidate in the Development Studies Program and will present his paper “Industrialization and Commodities in Brazil – The Case of BNDES”. A light lunch, fair trade coffee from Just Coffee, a selection of hot teas, and cookies will be served.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011, at 3:00PM, 585 Science Drive, University Research Park

“Dengue Virus in Brazil: The 2010 Epidemic”

Camila Romano, PhD Institute of Tropical Medicine, University of São Paulo

Friday, May 6th, 2011, at 12:00PM, Fredrick Buttel Conference Room, 354 Agriculture Hall

“What Can We Learn from Brazil’s “Pro-Poor” Strategies?”

The 2011 Haller LectureGay Seidman, Professor of Sociology, UW-Madison

Thursday, April 28, 2011, at 12:00PM, 260 Bascom Hall

“A Rising Power’s Challenge to Lead: Brazil’s Growing Presence and Influence in the Region” Paulo Sotero, Director of Brazil Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Sponsor: Brazil Initiative

Thursday, April 21, 2011, at 4:30PM, 8417 Social Science

“Sacred Double Consciousness: The Signs of Citizenship and Spirit Possession in the Afro-American World” Lecturer: J. Lorand Matory, Professor of Anthropology and Director of Center for African and African American Research, Duke University Sponsor: Department of Anthropology

Wednesday, April 20, 2011, at 12:00PM, 206 Ingraham Hall

“African Nations and Ethnic Identity in the Mina Coast and in Brazil: an Atlantic Comparative Approach” Lecturer: Luis Nicolau Pares, Professor of Anthropology, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) Sponsors: African Studies and Brazil Initiative

Tuesday, April 12, 2011, from 12:00PM to 1:00PM, 206 Ingraham Hall

“Higher Education in Brazil” Presented by Distinguished International Visitor to UW-Madison, Leandro Tessler, as part of “Brazil Month”. Leandro Tessler is the Director of International Relations and a Physicist at the University of Campinas, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He is also a member of the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Science Steering Committee for Curriculum reform and expansion in Brazil. He will describe the higher education system in Brazil and emphasize the similarities and differences relative to the American system. In Brazil only about 6 million people are enrolled in higher education (15% of the 18-24 year old cohort). About 70% of the enrollment is in for-profit institutions that are not research oriented. The system is highly regulated by federal or state governments. Graduate education is concentrated in the public sector. A centralized quality assessment program operating for several years has resulted in a well established system. Brazil currently accounts for 2.6% of all research papers published in English. There are several challenges ahead to increase the number of students and make access more equitable. Some actions in this direction will be discussed. >A special luncheon will be served on a first-come, first-served basis. Sponsored by the Brazil Initiative, LACIS, and the Division of International Studies.

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011 from 12:00PM to 1:00PM, On Wisconsin Room, Red Gym

Jan Hoffman French (University of Richmond)

“Legalizing Identities: Becoming Black or Indian in Brazil’s Northeast” Jan Hoffman French’s research focuses on Latin America, Legal and Political Anthropology, Human Rights and Anthropological Theory. Her new book, Legalizing Identities: Becoming Black or Indian in Brazil’s Northeast, published by UNC Press in 2009, shows how law can successfully serve as the momentum for the transformation of cultural practices and cultural indentity. Co-sponsored by the Brazil Initiative, LACIS, and the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology.

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010 from 3:00PM to 4:00PM, 1310 Grainger

Lecture: “Brazil: an Emerging Player in Science and Technology?” Presented by Dr. Glauco Arbix, Tinker Visiting Professor. Policies for Science and Technology in Brazil have focused more on supporting basic research performed by universities and research institutes, with companies in the productive sector seen only as recipients of knownledge and human resources provided by universities. Dr. Arbix will discuss how, since the end of the last decade, new programs and institutions have led to the promotion of innovation through an explicit, major objective in the national plans for development. Informal discussion will continue after the presentation over drinks and snacks.

Sunday, October 17 to Sunday, October 24, 2010

Writer in Residence: João Gilberto Noll. See the Writer in Residence Program page.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010: “The Experience of Fiction.” A lecture will be given at 2:30PM in 1820 Van Hise, followed by a reception in his honor at 3:30PM in 1920 Van Hise. Refreshments will be provided. Free and open to the public.
Friday, October 22, 11:00AM to 1:00PM, in 336 Ingraham: “Workshop on the Writing of João Gilberto Noll.”.
Friday, October 22, 4:00PM to 6:00PM, in 336 Ingraham: “The Fiction of João Gilberto Noll: a Symposium.” With distinguished guests Professor Leila Lehnen (University of New Mexico) “Un-Romancing The Family in ‘A Céu Aberto'”, Professor Rebecca J. Atencio (Tulane University), Professor Marilia Schaf Ribeiro (Michigan State University), Ronaldo Ribeiro (UW-Madison), and Robin Peery (UW-Madison).

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 from 12:00PM to 1:00PM, Ingraham 206

“Innovation Policy in Brazil: New Approaches in the Lula Government”, a talk by Professor Glauco Arbix, Professor of Sociology, University of Sao Paulo; Member, National Council of Science and Technology, Brazil.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at 12:00PM in 206 Ingraham

“The Evolution of the Workers’ Party: Implications for Understanding Brazilian Politics and Society”: Lecture by Professor David Samuels, Political Science, University of Minnesota.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 3:00PM in 1820 Van Hise

“Fiction as Exception” lecture by writer in residence, Bernardo Carvalho. Followed by a reception in 1920 Van Hise.