Time after time, Brazil has been hailed as the “land of the future.” Capturing the world’s attention for over five centuries of colonialism and often cruel modernization, Brazil has offered rich natural resources for extraction and diverse social and political realities for the imagination of travelers and the work of scientists, academics and artists alike. Drawing from various disciplines and the arts, this seminar explores how Brazil’s becomings have been represented nationally and internationally, and how new social actors have helped shape and recast the frames of this always imagined country.

Working with multiple media, students will discuss the making of diverse “Brazilian cultures” via music, sports, iconography, essays, fiction and poetry, as well as the engineering of policies and insurgent forms of citizenship. Becoming Brazil will conclude with the students' reflections on how today’s precarities and radical ideas are being articulated and can be seen in Brazil.

The seminar will be based in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Students will visit cultural and historical sites, and engage with local intellectuals, artists, and activists. The seminar will include classes of Portuguese at different levels and students will engage various research archival and fieldwork methodologies and produce critical and artistic projects.

This course fulfills the Social Analysis (SA) general education requirement, and counts towards the minor in Program in Latin American Studies.