Apr 13, 2017
Joel Wolfe – O Grande Brasil: A Spatial History of the Making of a Nation
7 p.m. – 9 p.m. Joukowsky Forum
Webcast Archive
Apr 10, 2017
President Dilma Rousseff - The Challenges for Democracy in Brazil
Dilma Rousseff is an economist and politician who was the 36th President of Brazil from 2011 until 2016. She is the first woman to have held the Brazilian presidency. Previously she served as the Minister of Energy and then as Chief of Staff to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who held office from 2003-2010. Born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, she joined the underground movement against the Brazilian military dictatorship in 1965 as a high school student and participated in two resistance organizations until she was arrested in early 1970. Brutally tortured for ten days, she served a three-year term for violating the National Security Act. Released in 1972, she moved to Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, to be near her husband who was still serving time for his oppositional activities. In Porto Alegre, she was involved in the founding of the Brazilian Democratic Labor Party and served as the Secretary of Energy for the state of Rio Grande do Sul under two administrations. In 2000, she joined the Workers’ Party. After the former trade-union leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected President in 2002, Rousseff joined his cabinet as Ministry of Energy. Her “Light for Everyone” campaign expanded rural electrification to millions of households in the countryside. In 2005, she was appointed the President’s Chief of Staff and served in that role until being nominated as the Workers’ Party presidential candidate in 2010. She defeated her main rival, José Serra of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, 56% to 44% in a second round run-off election. In 2014, she received 54 million votes against Brazilian Social Democracy Party candidate Aécio Neves winnin the election by a closer 51% to 49% margin. During her second term in office she was faced many challenges in her initiatives to reorganize the Brazilian economy. In 2016 she was impeached by the National Congress for allegedly breaking a budgetary law, removed from the presidency, and replaced by Vice President Michel Temer in that office. Dilma Rousseff retains her political rights and is actively participating in debates about Brazil, both nationally and internationally. She currently lives in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil.
4p.m. – 6p.m. Salomon Center for Teaching, Salomon 101, De Ciccio Family Auditorium, 79 Waterman Street.
Apr 5, 2017
Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman - The Color of Love: Racial Features and Affective Capital in Black Brazilian Families
In this presentation, Hordge-Freeman discusses her recent book The Color Of Love which reveals the power of racial hierarchies to infiltrate our most intimate relationships. Based on interviews and a sixteen-month ethnography of ten working-class Brazilian families, this presentation sheds light on how black Brazilian families respond to racial features in ways that simultaneously resist and reproduce racial hierarchies. Hordge-Freeman illustrates the privileges of whiteness by revealing how those with “blacker” features often experience material and emotional hardships. Moreover, she introduces her theoretical concept, 'affective capital’ to examine the tangible impact of differential treatment and the unequal distribution of affection in families.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Mar 22, 2017
Tiago Gualberto - Lembrança de Nhô Tim (Souvenir from Massa Tim): Contemporary Art, Inheritances from the Colonial Past and the Brazilian Present
The Lembrança de Nhô Tim (Souvenir From Massa Tim) is an artistic object produced in partnership with the city of Igarapé, in the state of Minas Gerais. The project combines a series of interventions proposed by the Afro-Brazilian artist Tiago Gualberto. In addition to the age-old activity of mining, the region stands out due to its proximity to Inhotim, currently the largest center of contemporary art in Brazil . Through recordings and accounts concerning the experiences arising from this artistic project, the artist will seek to trace a portrait of individual and collective memories about the continuities of the past and tensions in the present.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Mar 8, 2017
Gladys Mitchell-Walthour - Black Group Attachment and Political Opinion in Brazil
Relying on in-depth interviews, I examine how Afro-Brazilians in Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo feel linked to blacks. Many Brazilians discuss how racial and social exclusion shape their lives which has an impact on feeling connected to other Afro-Brazilians. I rely on survey data collected in in Salvador and São Paulo to examine the role of black group attachment on political support, including affirmative action, Law 10.639 (the requirement that African and Afro-Brazilian history be taught in schools), and whether the president should nominate blacks to important positions.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Mar 1, 2017
Diogo de Sant'Ana -The Right-Wing Backlash in Brazil: Origins and Consequences for Brazilian Democracy
In the current conjuncture, Brazil is going through a radical change in its policy framework. In less than 6 years, the political scenario of the country changed from a left coalition with unprecedented high popularity rates to an unelected conservative government, which has been promoting a number of reforms in the opposite direction to the expansion of rights and citizenship defined by the 1988 Constitution and implemented in a more emphatic way from the Workers Party (PT) victory in the 2002 election. The basis of this radical change goes far beyond the conflicts of the political arena. It is related to a strong reaction to the changes that occurred in the country in recent years. This reaction involves a conservative offensive in the fields of economics, social policy, institutional guarantees and moral values. In fact, a movement that, in conceptual terms, can be understood as a “Right-Wing Backlash” in Brazil. Diogo de Sant’ Ana is an attorney and career employee of the federal government of Brazil as an Analyst of Social Policy (ATPS). He has a PhD in Economic Law from São Paulo University (USP). Between 2008 and 2015, he worked at several positions for the Presidency of the Brazilian Republic. He is now doing his post-doctoral research as a visiting scholar at Columbia Law School.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Feb 22, 2017
Andrea Allen - Violence, Passion, and Power: Lesbian Women and Cultural Ideologies in Brazil
In this presentation, I will discuss the ways in which Brazilian lesbian women both disturb and reinscribe Brazilian cultural mores surrounding sexuality, gender roles, and violence. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Salvador da Bahia, I will argue that unlike heterosexual women, Brazilian lesbian women are able to embody cultural norms that emphasize sexual dominance and sexual freedom as integral aspects of Brazilian male authority, privilege, and even Brazilian identity as a whole. Nevertheless, they are also made invisible as citizens who are deemed worthy of full protection and consideration when they are victims of intimate partner violence and seek redress from the state.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Feb 14, 2017
Felipe Loureiro - The Alliance for Progress For A Few? US Economic Aid to Brazil’s States during the Administration of João Goulart (1961-1964)
The presentation investigates the allocation of U.S. aid and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) loans to Brazilian states during the government of João Goulart in Brazil (1961-1964). Scholars have long emphasized that John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress has employed state-by-state loans and grants as Cold War weapons to destabilize the Goulart regime, even though references on the subject were imprecise or based on few cases. U.S. officials have always denied such practices, claiming that aid was provided based on technical assessments. By using a broad range of sources, including a comprehensible database of U.S. and IDB dollar loans to Brazil’s states in the 1961-1964 period, the presentation points to their unequivocal political motivation. Washington clearly favored anticommunist and anti-Goulart governors in aid allocation, applying economic assistance to restrain Goulart’s power, set out a political alternative to the 1965 presidential elections, and constitute a coalition to collaborate in Goulart’s overthrow if it were needed. The presentation also claims that Brazilian governors played a crucial role in fostering and blocking U.S. state-by-state aid; and that Washington used assistance as a long-term instrument to stimulate a process of liberal capitalist modernization in Brazil, uprooting conditions for the proliferation of radical ideologies. The analyses of the patterns of U.S. state-by-state aid in Brazil shed light not only on how Alliance funds assisted to destabilize the country’s post-war democracy, but also contribute to a broader understanding of the Alliance for Progress in Latin America.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street
Feb 8, 2017
Vânia Penha Lopes - Confronting Affirmative Action in Brazil: University Quotas and the Quest for Racial Justice
After over ten years since its implementation, affirmative action in Brazil has been bathed in controversy. Professor Penha-Lopes will read from her forthcoming book, Confronting Affirmative Action in Brazil: University Quotas Students and the Quest for Racial Justice (Lexington Books), based on her sociological study of the first class of graduating quota students at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). While the university quota policies have created opportunities for upward social mobility for their beneficiaries, by themselves they cannot bring full racial justice to Brazil because the higher university setting is but one sector of society, besides being a privileged arena still occupied by a numerical minority of Brazilians, regardless of race or color. Professor Penha-Lopes also considers the future of affirmative action as a social policy in Brazil in view of the recent major political change brought up by the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and the installment of Michel Temer as her successor.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street
Nov 30, 2016
Tiffany Joseph - Race, Migration, and the Transnational Racial Optic
Brazil once earned a global reputation as a racial paradise, and the United States is infamous for its overt social exclusion of nonwhites. Yet, given the growing Latino and multiracial populations in the United States, the use of quotas to address racial inequality in Brazil, and the flows of people between each country, contemporary race relations in each place are starting to resemble each other. Relying on interviews conducted with residents of Governador Valadares, Brazil's largest immigrant-sending city to the U.S., this talk examines how Brazil-U.S. migration is changing Brazilians' understanding of race relations in each place. I identify and examine a phenomenon—the transnational racial optic—through which migrants develop and ascribe social meaning to race in one country by incorporating conceptions of race from the other. Analyzing the bi-directional exchange of racial ideals through the experiences of migrants, I offer an innovative framework for understanding how race can be remade in immigrant-sending communities.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Nov 17, 2016
Marc Hertzman - The Death of Zumbi: Suicide, Slavery, and History in Brazil and the Black Atlantic
At the end of the seventeenth century, Zumbi, the last leader of Palmares, Brazil’s iconic runaway slave community, died. For centuries, his death was cast as a heroic suicide, but historical documents show that he was, in fact, killed by colonial forces, who then decapitated his corpse and posted the head in public. This paper explores the different meanings that diverse actors have attached to Zumbi’s death and asks what each reveals about suicide, slavery, history, and race. Why do some parties cling to the suicide legend, and why do others insist on repeatedly debunking it? What can the struggles to define Zumbi’s death tell us about the trajectory and formation of modern Brazil and its racial mythologies?
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Nov 9, 2016
Fabio Kerche - A New Political Actor: Brazil's Prosecutor's Office and Political Crises
Brazil has been facing a profound political crisis since President Dilma Rousseff began her second term. New political actors are key in this process. One of them is the Brazilian Prosecutor’s Office. The combination of independence, discretion and tools for action which were provided by the 1988 Constitution has created a unique model in comparison, and it has allowed prosecutors to become more than a mere institution handling criminal cases. The lecture will present this institutional model.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street
Nov 7, 2016
Jean Wyllys - Brazil's Political Future, What Next?
Jean Wyllys is an Afro-Brazilian, openly gay Federal Congressman from Rio de Janeiro, representing the Party of Socialism and Freedom. Born in Alagoinhas, Bahia, and one of seven children, his mother was a washerwoman and his father was a car painter, who suffered from alcoholism. Wyllys completed a degree in journalism at the Federal University of Bahia. He originally became famous as the first openly gay participant of the reality show Brazilian Big Brother, where he was the fifth season’s finalist. In 2010, he was elected to Congress. Wyllys was reelected in 2014 with 145,000 votes, the seventh highest result among 46 Congressional representatives elected from the State of Rio de Janeiro.
7p.m. – 9p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Nov 5, 2016
Reception to Honor the Life of Thomas E. Skidmore (1932-2016)
In this reception to honor the life of Thomas E. Skidmore (1932-2016), renowned historian of Brazil, friends, family and colleagues gathered to remember one of the giants in the field of Brazilian history.
3p.m. – 5p.m. Alumnae Hall Crystal Room.
Nov 2, 2016
Maxine Margolis -What Does It Mean to be Brazilian?
As recent immigrants in the United States, Japan and several countries in Europe, Brazilians for the first time find themselves in situations where they are viewed as an ethnic minority. “Brazilian” becomes a marked category within the context of international migration because it raises questions of ethnic identity with which Brazilians have had little or no prior experience or consciousness. This presentation examines the contested identity of Brazilians in the U.S., the role of North American ethnic categories in this identity and Brazilians attempts to distinguish themselves from “the other”—Hispanics. It also briefly explores the identity of Brazilians in Portugal and in Japan.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street
Oct 12, 2016
Tianna Paschel - The Making and Unmaking of Black Rights in Latin America
After decades of denying racism and underplaying cultural diversity, Latin American states began adopting transformative ethno-racial legislation in the late 1980s. In addition to symbolic recognition of indigenous peoples and black populations, governments in the region created a more pluralistic model of citizenship and made significant reforms in the areas of land, health, education, and development policy. Becoming Black Political Subjects explores this shift from color blindness to ethno-racial legislation in two of the most important cases in the region: Colombia and Brazil. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, Tianna Paschel shows how, over a short period, black movements and their claims went from being marginalized to become institutionalized into the law, state bureaucracies, and mainstream politics. Paschel will also examines the consequences of these reforms, including the institutionalization of certain ideas of blackness, the reconfiguration of black movement organizations, and the unmaking of black rights in the face of reactionary movements.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. BassPas, Churchill House, 155 Angell Street.
Oct 6, 2016
Kwame Dixon - Afro-Politics and Civil Society in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil
Afro-civil society in Brazil is engaged in several important political projects: first, challenging hierarchies of political exclusion; second constructing new forms of citizenship by claiming new rights; third, testing recently enacted antidiscrimination and affirmative action measures; fourth, struggling to reclaim land rights both rural and urban; and fifth, seeking to increase political participation and representation on the local, state, and federal levels. Using Salvador as a case study, this talk spotlights and amplifies the democratic challenges and possibility of peoples of African descent in the Americas.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Oct 4, 2016
Márcia Lima - The Challenge of Racial Inclusion in Brazil: The Case of Higher Education
How have race relations and inequalities been analyzed in the Brazilian academic debate? Has the issue of race changed over the last decades? In an attempt to answer those questions, this presentation discusses the scenario of racial inequalities in Brazil as concerns access to higher education.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Sep 28, 2016
Brazilian Democracy and the Aftermath of Impeachment
In May 2016, the Executive Committee of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) approved a resolution considering the impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff as "undemocratic." It also sent a five-member commission, headed by Harvard Professor Sidney Chalhoub and including Brown Professor Keisha-Khan Perry to Brazil in July/August to investigate the situation and prepare a report Professors Chalhoub and Perry will present their analysis of the situation in Brazil based on the Commission's findings.
7p.m. – 9p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Apr 28, 2016
Brazil: What's Next?
A roundtable discussion on the current political situation in Brazil with Renan Quinalha, Edilza Sotero and André Martins Bogossian.
7p.m. – 9p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Apr 20, 2016
Gregory Morton - Assets that Last: Women’s Ownership and the Timing of Bolsa Família Benefits in Rural Brazil
Over the past decade, conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have become a core policy tool for addressing global poverty. None is bigger than Brazil’s giant Bolsa Família, a program that serves nearly a quarter of the nation’s population. How does this government money affect women’s ownership of assets inside the household? Or, to turn the question another way, what can Bolsa Família teach us about what it means to own? This talk is an argument for the importance of time. As it turns out, the timing of cash flows – daily, monthly, yearly, or unpredictable – has a crucial role to play in shaping the forms of ownership that result.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Mar 24, 2016
James Woodard - Creating Brazilian Consumer Capitalism in the American Century: Commerce, Culture, Power
Professor Woodard will offer an overview of his work-in-progress, on the development of Brazilian consumerism between the 1920s and the 1970s and on the constitutive role of US-style consumer culture in the making of modern Brazil.
4p.m. – 5:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Mar 9, 2016
Barbara Weinstein - Reproducing Regional Inequality: The Case of São Paulo, Brazil
São Paulo, long the most populous and economically dynamic state of Brazil, has many of the attributes of a highly industrialized nation, whereas the northeast of Brazil has struggled with elevated rates of poverty and economic stagnation. In her new book, The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil, Barbara Weinstein explores the “explanations” for these regional differences, and focuses particularly on the way in which the various narratives and discourses of regional difference draw on race as an explanatory factor.
12p.m. – 1:30p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Mar 2, 2016
Sergio Burgi -Opening Lecture and Reception to Inaugurate "Rio: A Visual Dialogue over One Hundred and Fifty Years"
Curator Sergio Burgio will give a lecture to inaugurate Art at Watson's exhibit in collaboration with the Instituto Moreira Salles entitled "Rio: A Visual Dialogue Over Hundred and Fifty Years." Sergio Burgi graduated in Social Sciences (USP-1981), and with a Masters in Fine Arts in Photography and Photographic Associate in Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He was the coordinator of the Center for Conservation and Preservation of FUNARTE’s Photographic archives between 1984 and 1991 and has been a Photographic Preservation Group member of the International Council Conservation Committee Museums (ICOM) since 1999. He currently coordinates the Photography area of the Instituto Moreira Salles, the main institution focused on the custody and preservation of photographic collections in Brazil.
6p.m. – 7p.m. Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.
Feb 24, 2016
Fabiano Maisonnave -Do Crises Sell Newspapers? Covering Brazil's Breakdown
Since the massive 2013 protests “against everything,” Brazil has sunk into one of its most troubled periods in recent history. Economic recession, the humbling defeat in the World Cup, the Petrobras corruption scandal and the recent Zika virus epidemic have produced extreme political polarization and led to soul-searching questions about what went wrong. What is the role of the media in all of this? Are journalists doing a good job writing history’s first draft?
6:30p.m. – 8p.m. McKinney Conference Room, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.