James N. Green

Director, Brazil Initiative
Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Chair of Latin American History

Areas of Interest: Modern Brazilian history and society, U.S.-Latin American relationships, gender and sexuality in Latin America.

Biography

James N. Green is the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Latin American History, director of Brown’s Brazil Initiative, Distinguished Visiting Professor (Professor Amit) at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the Executive Director of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA), which will be housed at the Watson Institute from 2015 to 2020.

Green served as the director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown University from 2005 to 2008. He was president of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA) from 2002 until 2004, and president of the New England Council on Latin American Studies (NECLAS) in 2008 and 2009.  He is the author of, among other books, Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-century Brazil and We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States. He is currently completing a biography of Herbert Daniel (1946-92), a Brazilian revolutionary and AIDS activist.

Research

US-Brazilian relations: In order to encourage research about US-Brazilian relations during the Cold War, I am the coordinator of the Opening the Archive project that has digitized and indexed 20,000 US State Department documents about Brazil from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. The project, initiated as a collaboration with the Brazilian National Truth Commission, plans to digitize 100,000 US documents about Brazil. See: http://library.brown.edu/openingthearchives/

Human Rights in Latin America: Based on US Military Intelligence Unit Archives, I am working with a team of US and Brazilian scholars analyzing the internal disputes of the Brazilian Armed Forces during the military dictatorship (1964-85).

Gender and Sexuality in Brazil: As a follow-up to the report on Homosexuality and the Dictatorship, a chapter published in the Brazilian National Truth Commission Report (2014), I am researching the debate within the Brazilian military about the proposal to end discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Publications

“Ditadura e homossexualidades” [The dictatorship and homosexualities],” with Renan Quinalha, 289-302. In Relatório Final da Comissão Nacional da Verdade [Final Report of the National Truth Commission]. Brasília: Comissão Nacional da Verdade, 2014. 

Homossexualidade e a ditadura brasileira: Opressão, resistencia e a busca da verdade [Homosexuality and the Brazilian Dictatorship: Oppression, Resistance, and the Search for Truth]. Edited with Renan Quinalha. São Carlos: Editora da Universidade Federal de São Carlos, 2014. 320 pp. 

“Paradoxes de la dicature brésilienne,” [Paradoxes of the Brazilian Dictatorship] in 50 Ans du Coup d’État militaire: histoire et historiographie.[Fifty Years since the Military Coup d’État: History and Historiography] Special Issue of Brésil(s): Cahiers du Brésil Contemporain. Co-edited with Monica Raisa Schpun, no. 5 (June 2014): 7-16.

50 Ans du Coup d’État militaire: histoire et historiographie.[Fifty Years since the Military Coup d’État: History and Historiography] Special Issue of Brésil(s): Cahiers du Brésil Contemporain. Co-edited with Monica Raisa Schpun, no. 5 (June 2014).

"Desire and Revolution: Socialists and the Brazilian Gay Liberation Movement in the 1970s.” In Human Rights and Transnational Solidarity in Cold War Latin America, ed. Jessica Stites Mor,  239-67. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press (Critical Human Rights Series), 2013. Published in Portuguese as “‘Abaixo a repressão, mais amor e mais tesão’: uma memória sobre a ditadura e o movimento de gays e lésbicas de São Paulo na época da abertura,” Revista Acervo,. 27:1 (Jan./June 2014): 53-82.

Modern Latin America, 8^th ed. Edited with Peter Smith and Thomas E. Skidmore. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Exile and the Politics of Exclusion in the Americas. Edited with Luis Roniger and Pablo Yankelevich. Sussex Academic Press, Sussex, England, 2012.

“Who is the Macho Who Wants to Kill Me?”: Male Homosexuality, Revolutionary Masculinity, and the Brazilian Armed Struggle of the 1960s and 70s,” Hispanic American Historical Review, v. 92, no. 3 (August 2012): 437-69. Awarded the Joseph T. Criscenti Best Article Prize of the New England Council on Latin American Studies; the Audre Lorde Prize of the Committee on Lesbian and Gay History of the American Historical Association for the most outstanding article published on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer history; and the Carlos Monsiais Award in Social Sciences from the Sexuality Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association.

A Mother’s Cry: A Memoir of Politics, Prison, and Torture under the Brazilian Military Dictatorship by Lina Penna Sattamini, translated by Rex P. Nielson and James N. Green, with introduction by James N. Green. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.

“We Cannot Remain Silent”: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States, 1964-85. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.  Published in Portuguese as Apesar de vocês: Oposição à ditadura militar nos EUA, 1964-85. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009. Awarded the Book Award of Merit by the Brazilian Section, Latin American Studies Association.

Teaching

Fall 2015

HIST 1310-S01 History of Brazil

This course charts the history of Brazil from Portuguese contact with the indigenous population in 1500 to the present. It examines the country’s political, economic, social, intellectual, and cultural development to understand the causes, interactions, and consequences of conflict, change, and continuity within Brazilian society. 

HIST 2971E-S01 Latin American Histiography

This course examines the development of historical writings on Latin America produced in the United States from the late nineteenth century until the present. We will focus on themes, such as race, gender, labor, subaltern studies, dependency theory, postcolonial analysis, and post-modernism, to understand the diverse approaches to Latin American history.

Spring 2016

HIST 1967R-S01 History of Rio de Janeiro

From colonial outpost to capital of the Portuguese Empire, from sleepy port to urban megalopolis, this seminar examines the history of Rio de Janeiro from the sixteenth century to the present. Using an interdisciplinary perspective rooted in historical analyses, we will analyze multiple representations of the city, its people, and geography in relationship to Brazilian history, culture, and society