Culture, Space and the Environment in Brazil (Level 6)

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 6
• Convenor and tutor: Professor Luciana Martins
• Assessment: a 3500-word essay (50%) and three-hour in-class test (50%)

In this module we critically examine space, culture and society in Brazil from the nineteenth century to the present, through interdisciplinary debates in cultural studies, history, anthropology, literature and visual culture.

You will learn about relationships between:

• global and local processes
• national and regional identities
• place, class and race
• representation, landscape and memory.

Drawing upon a variety of case studies, the lectures address the social production and the meanings of ‘place’, ‘space’, ‘nature’, ‘culture’ and ‘identity’ in an age of globalisation.

The module will be conducted in a colloquium format. You will be expected to attend every session and to participate actively in class discussion.

Indicative syllabus

• Introduction
• Brazilian culture, space and the environment
• Urban contexts
• Garbage cultures I
• Garbage cultures II
• Mangroves
• Mining landscapes
• Plantation stories
• Sugar
• Coffee
• Soya
• On ‘wilderness’
• Nature, nationalism and development
• Contesting development
• Indigeneity and the nation

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• demonstrate knowledge of key debates about the environment in contemporary Brazilian culture, space and society
• manipulate conceptual frameworks to analyse cultural representations of the environment in contemporary Brazilian texts, visual arts and film
• consider critically the relationship between coloniality, social injustice and cultural representations of nature in Brazil.