It has been and remains a tumultuous time in Brazil.
Of course there was the Rio Olympics, which some feared would fall into debacle under the chaos of the Zika virus and human rights protests.
Now, Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president, has been ousted by the country’s senate. Prominent critics, such as Noam Chomsky, say that Rouseff’s impeachment was organized to secure the position of corrupt members of the Brazilian government.
The seeds of some of this discontent (and much more) have been explored by a number of UIP authors. The list below provides a nice #UIPBrazilSyllabus for anyone looking to learn more.
Christin A. Smith – Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence, and Performance in Brazil
Smith argues that the dialectic of glorified representations of black bodies and subsequent state repression reinforces Brazil’s racially hierarchal society.
Erica Lorraine Williams – Sex Tourism in Bahia: Ambiguous Entanglements
Erica Lorraine Williams explores how sexism, racism, and socio-economic inequality interact in the Brazilian sex industry.
Alfredo Bosi – Brazil and the Dialectic of Colonization
A classic of Brazilian literary criticism and historiography, Brazil and the Dialectic of Colonization explores the unique character of Brazil from its colonial beginnings to its emergence as a modern nation.
Kia Caldwell – Health Equity in Brazil (forthcoming, Spring, 2017)
The author writes of how Brazil has succeeded and failed at certain challenges in its quest to provide quality healthcare for all its citizens (particularly to Afro-Brazilian women and men), and examines the development of the feminist health movement and black women’s movement.