Professor Sidney Chalhoub. This course seeks to analyze the ways in which Machado de Assis, the most important Brazilian novelist of all times, appropriated the European tradition of the novel of adultery. In doing so, he sought to discuss literary models (realism), scientific ideologies (social Darwinism), gender (he expected the misogyny of readers to fill the lacunae of the narration), and class conflict (characters in dependent relations, women in particular, deploy an array of strategies to deal with the potential violence of patriarchal figures). Readings...

Professor Sidney Chalhoub. This course will analyze major themes in the social and political history of Brazil from Independence (1822) to the present. Themes to be addressed are the following: Independence, colonial legacies and national identity; state formation and the question of citizenship rights; the African slave trade; land and labor policies in a slave society; slave emancipation and the crisis of the monarchy; the establishment of the republican regime; gender and the crisis of patriarchy; urban renewal and popular protest; social movements in rural areas;...

Professors Tamar Herzog and Alejandro de la Fuente. The Latin American History Seminar and Workshop is a yearlong research seminar and workshop that meets every other week to study a central question in Latin American history (in the fall) and provide opportunities for scholars to share their own work and learn about the scholarship of others in a workshop form (in  the spring). In 2016-2017 we will discuss how differences were defined, negotiated, represented, and challenged in colonial Latin American, creating both inclusion and exclusion. Among...