Amazonia: People Environment

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course examines the cultures, peoples, and representations of the Amazon rainforest in literature, film, and popular culture. The class will discuss the ways in which the Native People of the Amazon interact with and represent their environment through a study of their pre-Columbian history and art and of their relationship with non-Amazonian colonizers. It will also trace the evolving perception of the Amazon rainforest in the West, from the initial stage of colonization, through the scientific study of the region by nineteenth-century European naturalists and the rubber boom, to more recent conservationist approaches. Finally, we will look into the role of the Amazon in the construction of a Brazilian national identity. Intellectuals such as essayist Euclides da Cunha, Modernist writer Mário de Andrade or anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro have all presented the country’s views on the Amazon as a litmus test of Brazil’s ability to navigate between the drive to modernization and environmental protection. Taught in English.