Brazil: Literature, Visual Arts, Music, and Nation

5-None

This is a multidisciplinary survey course about Brazilian culture and literature. It uses different sources of materials: travel writing descriptions, accounts of visitors and explorers, scientists, visual arts, literary texts, anthropological and ethnographical approaches, history, philosophy and media. This course offers a complete survey of the complex relations involving the origins of Brazil, colonization and slavery by the Portuguese, and the creation of a Brazilian nationality and identity by both adopting the Portuguese language and rejecting the colonial model. It provides the essential readings, historical and cultural backgrounds that form the backbone for informed discussions about the history of Brazilian culture.