Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Brazil has the largest African-descendant population outside of the African continent. In the last decades, stronger political and cultural ties between Brazil and Africa have inspired greater literary and scholarly interest in the subject of blackness in Brazil. The objective of this seminar is to familiarize students with a range of materials about the African-Brazilian experience, with emphasis on literary production by authors of various racial backgrounds. We will read excerpts of Quitubia (1791), the first Brazilian literary work to include an African character; the novel Úrsula (1859), by Brazil’s first female novelist, Afro-Brazilian Maria Firmina dos Santos; a 1940s play from the Black Experimental Theater; passages from Carolina Maria de Jesus’s diaries from the 1960s; and, selections from the Quilombhoje collective’s Cadernos negros (1970s-2000s). Additionally, we will examine more recent works by Afro-Brazilian writers, including Conceição Evaristo, Ana Maria Gonçalves, and Paulo Lins (Cidade de Deus). While the primary focus of this seminar is literature, we will also look at works of history and sociology. In addition to race, we will explore issues of gender, class, and the broader African diaspora. We will discuss, for example, the rights of black women in Brazil and revisions of Gilberto Freyre’s 1930’s Casa-grande & senzala. Readings and class discussions will be in Portuguese. Students will write a research paper.

HISP-P 751    #31511      11:30A - 2:00P      T      LH 112      Prof.  Luciana Namorato