Short Term Unit
AASs22
Span s22
Instructors:
Czerny Brasuel Baltasar Fra-Molinero Charles Nero
Multicultural Center Hathorn Hall 300 Pettigrew 303
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Brazil has the largest population of African descent in the world second only to Nigeria.
Brazil is unique along with Cuba for having the longest history of slavery in the Western
World in modern times. Slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888, and its long history continues
to have a decisive effect upon contemporary social and political institutions. This course aims
at understanding the impact of slavery in modern Brazil by examining African retentions in
history, culture, and religion. To come to an understanding of the centrality of slavery in the
formation of Brazil as a modern nation, this course examines
The objective of this unit is to provide an intense immersion in Brazilian culture through field trips, films, lectures, and symposia. Students will approach the Africanity of Brazil as a nation from a variety of perspectives and testimonies. Although there will be an intense historical profile of Braziilian society, the institution of slavery and the racial dilemma of the Brazilian nation, a multiple perspective of this issues will be offered through the viewing and discussion of films, the reading of important and influential essays, as well as in the presence of invited speakers.
Organization of the course
On campus: seminar classes meet for four hours each day three times a week. Students will
attend lectures given by the different instructors of the course, hold seminar discussions, and
attend the projection of films.
Off campus: There will be two field trips outside Bates College. One is to the Schomburg
Institute of Black Culture in New York City, and the other is to attend a Brazilian dance
festival in Boston. Participation in both field trips is mandatory, and a condition to pass this
course.
Optional field trip to Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil. August 1998. Details at the end of the syllabus.
Requirements
Participants are required to complete a research project on a Brazilian literary work to be
assigned during the second week of the short term unit.
Students in who have registered in Spanish 22 will do the readings from Barnet and Freyre in
Spanish, as a condition to have the course recognized as a unit for the Spanish major or the
Spanish minor concentration. They will write short review essays in Spanish on both readings
(600 words each). They will also have daily discussion (1:30-2:00 pm) in Spanish on
previously assigned topics.
A list of these topics appears at the end of this syllabus.
Grading system
Pass-Fail.
Attendance is mandatory. Failure to attend more than three class sessions, or parts of them,
will constitute dismissal from the course.
Optional Trip to Brazil in August
This course culminates with a trip to Salvador de Bahia and Cachoeira, where participants will observe the commemoration by the female secret society Irmandade da Boa Morte of its annual festival. In Salvador, the capital city of Bahia, students will visit some of its more than 365 churches, all built by slaves, and in especial the church of Nossa Senhora do Rosario, see of the old confraternity of the slaves, and only temple where slaves were allowed to pray. Visits to the Jorge Amado Museum, the slave dungeons in the main market--where recently arrived Africans to be sold were hidden during the inspections effected by the British after the abolition of the trade in 1807--, and the downtown colonial area, recently declared by the United Nations as part of the patrimony of the humanity. The colonial section of Salvador is the largest colonial urban setting in the Americas. A visit to the Sociedade de Proteiçao de indocumentados will afford the students an opportunity to learn about a mutual aid society founded by free and enslaved people of African descent that would provide papers and certificates to enslaved men who were saving for their self purchase or the purchase of others. Visits to terreiros, or temples of the candomble religion will allow students to see demonstrations of capoeira, the martial arts dance of African origin. Students will also visit the Non-governmental organization Geledes, a feminist group created for the defense of women and their rights.
The religious festival of the Boa Morte is held every year in August in honor of the societys
founder and patron, who convinced owners to give their slaves a "good death" in exchange
for the life that they had not given them. The Irmandade is composed exclusively of women
over the age of sixty-five, who descend from enslaved Africans. The festival takes place over
three days of processions and masses held following the ritual of the Brazilian Roman
Catholic Apostolic Church, not to be confused with its homonymous in the Vatican. The
purpose of the attendance to this religious festival is to provide the participants with both a
cultural and a spiritual experience of connectedness with the people and our shared past.
Calendar
Monday April 20
Introduction.
Discussion of course, time lines, requirements, travel, and readings.
Film: Dona Flor and her two husbands.
Discussion of questions.
Sesión en español: introducción.
Wednesday 22
Early Brazilian History.
Formation of a slave society. "Escravos indios, escravos africanos.". Relations between the indigenous and the Africans.
Readings: Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves.
Film: Faces of Slavery
Film: Youth Close-up
Sesión en español: Casa Grande y senzala.
Friday 24
The Slave Trade in Brazil and Latin America.
Spain and Portugal and the beginning of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Bahia in the 17th and 18th Centuries.
The Color Caste: Creoles and Bozales.
Schwartz, Stuart B. Sugar Plantations in the formation of Brazilian society Bahia, 1550-1835.
Conrad, Robert. World of Sorrow: The African Slave Trade to Brazil.
Film: Black Sun/White Devil
Sesión en español: Alonso de Sandoval, Un tratado sobre la esclavitud.
Monday 27 The creation of the concept of "a nation without race."
Readings: Carl Degler, "The Mulatto escape hatch"
Howard Winant, " Racial Conditions: Politics, Theories, Comparisons"
Film: Sugar Cane Alley
Sesión en español: Nicolás Guillén, Y tu abuelo, dónde está? Entrega del primer ensayo en
español: Gilberto Freyre.
Wednesday 29 Women Under Slavery. Sexual subordination. Labor division and gender.
Legitimacy. Free and slave wombs. Responses to subjugation.
Readings: Hortense Spiller, "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe"
Carl Degler: "The Black Mother on Two Continents"
Gary Mills: "Coincoin: An Eighteenth-Century 'Liberated' Woman."
Film: Xica da Silva
Sesión en español: Nancy Morejón.
Friday May 1
Field Trip to the Schomburg Institute, New York.
Arthur A. Schomburg, "The Negro Digs Up His Past".
Sesión en español: Arturo Schomburg, intelectual negro puertorriqueño.
Monday 4
Retentions of African cultures under slavery.
Religion: African Gods,
European Masks.
Family kinship systems. Secret societies. Mutual aid and
burial societies.
Readings: Bastide, Roger. The African Religions of Brazil: Toward a Sociology of the Interpretation of Civilizations.
Sacred Leaves of Candomble:African Magic and Religion in Brazil.
Film: Orfeo negro
Sesión en español: Lydia Cabrera, Por qué...?
Wednesday 6
Retentions of culture: Language, folklore, myths and stories.
Capoeira.
Readings: Orixas.
Peter Fry: Male Homosexuality and Afro-Brazilian Possession Cults.
Murphy, Josoeph M. Working the Spirit: Ceremonies of the African Diaspora.
Margaret Menezes, Olodum.
Film: Carnival Bahia
Sesión en español: Lydia Cabrera, Cuentos negros.
Friday 8
Retentions of culture.
Music. Guest Lecturer, Prof. Linda Williams.
Field trip to Boston: Brazilian Cultural Center.
Monday 11
Resistance and Revolt.
Comparative studies of Maroon societies in Brazil and Cuba.
Price, Richard. Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas.
Stuart Schwartz, Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels.
Abdias do Nascimento, Quilombismo
Film: Quilombo.
Sesión en español: Barnet, Biografía de un cimarrón.
Wednesday 13
State responses to Black self-determination. Comparison between
Brazil and Cuba.
Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835.
Aline Helg, The Racist Massacre of 1912.
Readings: Barnet, Miguel. The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave
Film: La Última Cena.
Sesión en español, Barnet, Biografía de un cimarrón.
Friday 15
The Africans and the Indigenous in the political context of 20th Century
Brazil. The Dictatorial Republic. Rise of the Black consciousness movement. Cultural articulations of identity.
Guest speaker: Michael Mitchell.
Readings to be announced.
No hay sesión en español. Entrega del segundo ensayo: Biografía de un cimarrón.
Monday 18
Indigenous struggle. Struggle for land in a global context.
Readings to be announced.
Film: Luzia
Film: The Kayapo
Sesión en español, pendiente.
Wednesday 20
Brazilian Feminism
Readings to be announced.
Film: Mulleres negras.
Sesión en español, pendiente.
Friday 22
Course wrap-up. Presentations of projects. Discussion.
Film: Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business.
Horizons:Audiotape. Discussion of film and questions.
Brazil Travel Project
Day one. Arrival in Salvador. Visit to the Pelourinho and Nossa Senhora do Rosario.
Day two Visit to the Main market. Jorge Amado Museum.
Day three Visit to the Geledes Womens Organization. Visit to monuments of Muslim African presence in Bahia.
Day four Visit to the University da Bahia. Colonial Baroque monuments.
Day five Visit to terreiros. Sociedade de Proteiçao de Indocumentados.
Day six Cachoeira: Visit to the town and artist community
Day seven Visit to the Mother House of the Irmandade da Boa Morte.
Day eight Friday First day of the religious festivity of the Boa Morte. Procession at night
Day nine Saturday: Second day of the religious festivity of the Boa Morte. Music sessions by North Eastern Brazilian musical groups. Procession at night. Return to Africa through the waters ceremony.
Day ten Sunday. Third day of the religious festival of the Boa Morte. Procession during the daytime and confraternal meal at the Mother House at the end.
Return to Salvador
Day eleven Return to the United States.