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Freshman Seminar: Planet Amazonia
Freshman Seminar: Planet Amazonia
Semester: Spring
Offered: 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
Description:
Amazonia is a planetary hotspot of biocultural diversity and a massive carbon sink on the brink. The seminar explores how Indigenous knowledges and the environment co-produce one another and considers the significance of forest-making practices for conservation science and climate change mobilization. Drawing from historical, ethnographic, and ecological studies, Planet Amazonia is a platform for alternative storytelling and future-making agendas based on new scholarly and activist alliances. Students will engage with Indigenous scholars and environmental activists and will craft alternative visions to safeguard this vital planetary nexus.
This course has been featured on Princeton University's 2023-2024 Report of the Treasurer and on the Brazil LAB website in 2023 and 2024.
Upperclass Seminar: Amazonia, The Last Frontier
Upperclass Seminar: Amazonia, The Last Frontier
Semester: Spring
Offered: 2020, 2021, 2022
Description:
This course focused on the Brazilian Amazon, the world’s largest tropical forest and the ancestral home of over one million indigenous peoples, now threatened by deforestation and fires. Further degradation of the Amazon will have disastrous consequences for its peoples, biodiversity, rainfall and agriculture, and global climate change. Combining perspectives from the social sciences and the humanities, we will critically examine projects to colonize, develop, and conserve the Amazon over time and reflect on the cultural wisdoms of its guardians. Students will work together to develop alternative visions to safeguard the forest for Brazil and the planet.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, this course transitioned to remote instruction with great success, as reported by the University on its homepage.
Undergraduate Seminar: Brazil-Africa
Undergraduate Seminar: Brazil-Africa
Semester: Spring
Offered: 2019
Description:
This seminar explored South-South networks in historical and contemporary perspectives, taking the Brazil-Africa interface as a case study. Combining perspectives from the social sciences, humanities, and the arts, the course begins with a critical review of the place of Brazil and Africa in the Portuguese Empire and explores the South Atlantic slave trade. While examining early cultural exchanges and the way in which the colonies created their own dynamics of exchange and domination, we will also consider decolonization struggles and solidarities. Next, we will trace Brazil’svision of extraction in Africa and pay attention to the intensification of international relations and emerging development aid between Brazil and postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa. These South-South cooperation initiatives covertopics such as diplomacy, security and defense, humanitarianism, economic investments and technology transfer. Thecourse ends with an examination of Brazil’s recent venture into the global stage and the presence of China as an increasingly powerful, potential geopolitical partner for both Brazil and Africa.
Undergraduate Seminar: Brazilian History
Undergraduate Seminar: Brazilian History
Semester: Spring
Offered: 2018
Description:
This course introduced students to the history of slavery and race relations in modern Brazil and will explore how it resonates in present-day debates about citizenship. We will read classical and recent historical works as well as primary sources in order to gain a critical and comparative understanding of slavery as an institution in the Americas, and its adaptability to local realities. Students will write papers tackling how the history of slavery has distinctively shaped ideas of democracy, human rights, and social justice in Brazil and comparatively.
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