Brazil Imagined

The first comprehensive cultural history of Brazil to be written in English, Brazil Imagined: 1500 to the Present captures the role of the artistic imaginary in shaping Brazil's national identity. Analyzing representations of Brazil throughout the world, this ambitious survey demonstrates the ways in which life in one of the world's largest nations has been conceived and revised in visual arts, literature, film, and a variety of other media. Beginning with the first explorations of Brazil by the Portuguese, Darlene J. Sadlier incorporates extensive source material, including paintings, historiographies, letters, poetry, novels, architecture, and mass media to trace the nation's shifting sense of its own history. Topics include the oscillating themes of Edenic and cannibal encounters, Dutch representations of Brazil, regal constructs, the literary imaginary, Modernist utopias, "good neighbor" protocols, and filmmakers' revolutionary and dystopian images of Brazil. A magnificent panoramic study of race, imperialism, natural resources, and other themes in the Brazilian experience, this landmark work is a boon to the field.

Imagining Brazil provides a comprehensive and multifaceted picture of Brazil in the age of globalization. Privileging diversity in relation to the authors as well as the manner in which Brazil is perceived, JessZ Souza and Valter Sinder have assembled historians, political scientists, sociologists, literary critics, and scholars of culture in an attempt to understand a complex society in all its richness and diversity. Rising from one of the worldOs poorest societies in the 1930s to the eighth largest world economy in the 1980s, Brazil is used as an example of globalizationOs impact on peripheral societies, exploring in new contexts the serious social problems that have always characterized this society. Imagining Brazil explores the connections between society and politics and culture and literature, creating an encompassing volume of interest to scholars of Latin American studies as well as those interested in how globalization impacts the varied aspects of a country.

Brazil has famously been called a country of contradictions. It is a place where narratives of "racial democracy" exist in the face of stark inequalities, and where the natural environment is celebrated as a point of national pride, but at the same time is exploited at alarming rates. To people on the outside looking in, these contradictions seem hard to explain. Understanding Contemporary Brazil tackles these problems head-on, providing the perfect critical introduction to Brazil's ongoing social, political, economic, and cultural complexities. Key topics include: • National identity and political structure. • Economic development, environmental contexts, and social policy. • Urban issues and public security. • Debates over culture, race, gender, and spirituality. • Social inequality, protest, and social movements. • Foreign diplomacy and international engagement. By considering more broadly the historical, political economic, and socio-cultural roots of Brazil’s internal dynamics, this interdisciplinary book equips readers with the contextual understanding and critical insight necessary to explore this fascinating country. Written by renowned authors at one of the world's most important centers for the study of Brazil, Understanding Contemporary Brazil is ideal for university students and researchers, yet also accessible to any reader looking to learn more about one of the world's largest and most significant countries.

Examines the South American country that is destined to be one of the world's premier economic powers by the year 2030, and considers some of the abundant problems the nation faces.

For decades, scholars and journalists have hailed the enormous potential of Brazil, which has been one of the world's largest economies for the last twenty years. But its promise has too often been curtailed by dictatorship, racism, poverty, and violence. Offering an interdisciplinary approach to the critical issues facing Brazil, the contributors to this volume analyze the democratization of the country's media, its nuclear capabilities, changing crime rates, the spread of Pentecostalism and indigenous religions, the development of popular culture, the growth of Brazilian agribusiness, and the implementation of sustainable economic development, especially in the Amazon. The only member of the large, newly industrialized, fast-growing BRICS economies (along with Russia, China, India, and South Africa) in the Western hemisphere, Brazil plays a unique role regionally and throughout the world. Emergent Brazil is a comprehensive and timely collection of essays that explore the country's major domestic concerns and the impact of its trends, institutions, culture, and religion across the globe. Jeffrey D. Needell is professor of history at the University of Florida and former Latin American program associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the author of A Tropical Belle Epoque and The Party of Order.

People from outside of Brasília often dismiss Brazil’s capital as socially divided, boring, corrupt, and emotionally cold. Apparently its founders created not a vibrant capital, but a cultural wasteland. However, as Sophia Beal argues, Brasília’s contemporary artists are out to prove the skeptics wrong. These twenty-first-century artists are changing how people think about the city and animating its public spaces. They are recasting Brasília as a vibrant city of the arts in which cultural production affirms a creative right to the city. Various genres—prose, poetry, film, cultural journalism, music, photography, graffiti, street theater, and street dance—play a part. Brasília’s initial 1960s art was state-sanctioned, carried out mainly by privileged, white men. In contrast, the capital’s contemporary art is marked by its diversity, challenging norms about who has a voice within the Brasília art scene. This art demystifies the capital’s inequities and imagines alternative ways of inhabiting the city.