Prof. Jens AndermannDepartment of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures13-19 Washington Square, 4th Floor, Room 419ja138@nyu.edu

CORE-UA-500Cultures and Contexts: Portuguese Sea – Empire, Decolonization and Diaspora

Cantino Planisphere, Lisbon 1502

Lectures (Section 001) Instructor: Professor Jens Andermann, Spanish and Portuguese (ja138@nyu.edu)Tue/Thu 11.00-12.15, Silver 101A

Recitations (Sections 002-005) Section 002 / Instructor: Fan Fan, Friday 9.30-10.45, 45 W4 B04Section 003 / Instructor: Fan Fan, Friday 11.00-12.15, Silver 409Section 004 / Instructor: Francisco Pires, Friday 12.30-1.45, 25 W4 C18Section 005 / Instructor: Francisco Pires, Friday 2.00-3.15, Silver 510

Office hours Jens Andermann (Room 4019, 4th floor, 19 University Place): Tue, Thu 1-3 pm or by email appointment at other times.The recitation instructors will let you know their office hours in the first recitation on 1/31.

Cultures and Contexts

Cultures and Contexts is intended to prepare you for life in a globalized world. Through critical engagements with primary cultural materials, it introduces you to ways humans come to understand themselves as members of social, religious, national, and regional collectives, and with the dynamics of cultural interaction and influence. As a part of the College Core Curriculum, it is designed to extend your education beyond the focused studies of your major, preparing you for your future life as a thoughtful individual and active member of society.

Course description

How did the Western imperial world-order come into being? And what may be leading to its ultimate demise today? Are the legacies of European colonialism and imperialism still at work today? How has colonial power been resisted and contested? What kinds of cultural expression have been forged in the process, both in the colonial center itself and on the peripheries? The small kingdom of Portugal was Europe’s first colonial power, establishing trading posts and settler colonies in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean from the start of the fifteenth century. By the mid-sixteenth century the Portuguese had already established themselves on all five continents, in the process also pioneering forced enslavement of subdued populations and plantation monoculture. The last Portuguese colony, Macau, was only ‘returned’ to China in 1999. But even though Portuguese expansion, starting with the conquest of Ceuta in 1415 (still today an African territory under Spanish control) was always accompanied by extraordinary degrees of violence and suffering imposed on indigenous peoples, the early-modern Portuguese world-system also yielded an exceptionally rich two-way (or even three and four-way) traffic between cultures. Because of Portugal’s rather modest size and administrative power, exchanges of commodities but also of musical and visual forms, linguistic and religious expressions occurred as much between one colonial outpost and the next as between colonial periphery and European center. As a result, West African religious practices and culinary traditions are still very much alive today in northeastern Brazil, and Brazilian samba and forró (as well as Portuguese fado and Cape Verdian morna) can still be heard today in Maputo (Mozambique), Dili (East Timor), or Goa (India) — as much as Angolan kizomba and kuduro can be in Lisbon (Portugal).

In this course, based on a selection of (canonic as well as more marginal) literary, filmic, and musical works, we will learn about the way in which Portuguese seaward expansion opened the path for Western colonialism and globalization, as well as about the forms of local agency and resistance that challenged or subverted Portuguese colonial rule. We will look at the contested processes of construction and the ultimate demise of Portuguese empire and the emergence of post-colonial nation-states (starting with the independence of Brazil at the beginning of the nineteenth century) through a range of literary, artistic, musical and filmic expressions. Discussion of these materials will raise issues about the ideological underpinnings of colonialism and decolonization as well as on the diasporic memory-work individuals and communities carry out through poetry, music, and dance. The overall aim of the course is to raise sensitivity about the multiple interconnections and cross-fertilizations that sustain and enrich Luso-Brazilian cultures in the present — including, not least, the Portuguese heritage of New York City, with the foundation, in 1654, of its first Jewish congregation by exiles from Recife, Brazil, and the presence until today of sizeable Portuguese, Azorean and Brazilian communities.

NYU Classes / NYU Stream

All course readings will be posted to NYU classes, organized by the date of the lecture for which reading should be prepared. We will also be using the course website for discussion forums and for posting additional resources for the class (assignment guidelines, links to class-related websites, etc.). Please be sure to link your email to your NYU account so that you receive notices sent out to the entire class through NYU Classes.

On NYU Classes, you will also be required to post 5 short response essays (200-350 words) to selected works and topics discussed in class. You can upload these to the ‘Forum’ section, following the on-screen instructions (if you experience difficulties with the platform, please

2

feel free to contact the professor or your recitation instructor). Sample questions for these short essays will be circulated after each session, but you are also free to choose your own angle on the works under study.

Film and video materials will be made available, unless otherwise announced, through our course channel on NYU Stream. At the start of term, please log on to NYU Stream with your NYU User ID and password so we can add you to the course channel.

Grade Breakdown

Preparation and participation in class (including the recitations) 20%2 informal presentations in recitations (5% each) 10%5 postings (250-300 words each) on Forums on NYU Classes, 25%

in the form of responses to designated materialIn-class midterm exam 15%Final exam (taken under exam conditions but with 30%

topics notified in advance)

Disability Disclosure StatementAcademic accommodations are available for students with disabilities. The Moses Center website is www.nyu.edu/csd. Please contact the Moses Center for Students with Disabilities (212-998-4980 or mosescsd@nyu.edu) for further information. Students who are requesting academic accommodations are advised to reach out to the Moses Center as early as possible in the semester for assistance.

PlagiarismThroughout NYU, plagiarism is taken very seriously and can lead to your expulsion from the University. Plagiarism is when you copy a source without acknowledging where you have taken the material from and pass the material off as your own; whenever you use a print or online source, you should acknowledge it, giving full publication details, including the page number(s) if you are quoting directly.

For books, the format is: Author. Title. Place of publication: Publisher, Date. For an article in an edited volume, the format is: Author. “Chapter title.” Title of book.

Ed. Name(s) of Editor(s). Place of publication: Publisher, Date. For articles in a journal, the format is: Author. “Article title.” Journal title Vol. number

(Year): pages. For online materials: Author. “Title.” URL (date accessed).

It is good to show that you have researched and consulted sources, provided you acknowledge them. You should acknowledge your sources even if you are paraphrasing them, without copying them verbatim. You should remember that electronic resources make plagiarism very easy to detect: do not be tempted—plagiarism is a form of intellectual dishonesty.

Behavior in classYou are expected to devote your full attention to lectures. No cell-phones or other electronic device should be on or in use during class time, except for laptops or tablets provided you use them only for note-taking. Any infraction will forfeit your right to use your laptop in class for the remainder of the semester. You should not leave class to take phone calls; doing so will count as a full day’s absence.

3

Missed classes will count against your final grade. 100% attendance is the norm; attendance will be checked at lectures and recitations. If you have a medical or other emergency, please email your recitation instructor and the professor immediately. You will not be penalized for missing classes on religious holidays for reasons of religious observance, provided that you notify the recitation instructor and professor with details.

Late work: any work submitted after the due date will suffer the loss of two grade steps per day (e.g. a B+ would convert to a B-). No late work will be accepted after the last class. Failure to submit any one piece of required work will result in a fail grade for the course.

Contacting usThe professor and recitation instructors will be pleased to discuss with you any queries or concerns about the course, whether by email or in person. Note our office hours and do come to see us. If you can’t make office hours, email us to schedule an appointment at another time. Remember that office hours are not only for discussing problems or assignments: we are here to reflect with you on what you are learning and to help you develop the intellectual curiosity and ideas that the course may raise. We look forward to talking to you.

WEEKLY SCHEDULE

All readings will be circulated in English translation, although original titles in Portuguese are also indicated in the syllabus below. Students with reading proficiency in Portuguese are welcome to read texts in the original (please request copies from the professor or your recitation instructor). Even so, all students should bring copies in English to classes, as discussion will be based on the English version. Films will be made available in their original language with English subtitles.

Introduction: Portuguese Sea

Week 1 1/28 Objectives/Expectations. Run through the issues and different kinds of material we will be studying and what that involves.

Fernando Pessoa, ‘Mar portuguêz’ (Portuguese Sea, 1934), in Fernando Pessoa & Co, Selected Poems, transl. Richard Zenith (New York: Grove Press, 1998), 278

1/30 Film: Víctor Lopes, Língua. Vidas em Português (Language: Lives in Portuguese.

Angola, Brazil, Portugal 2003. 105”)

1. Empire: Portuguese Maritime Expansion and the Making of the Colonial World-Order

4

The unique experience of maritime expansion on behalf of a small, poor country on the Western margins of Europe has left an indelible mark on Portuguese culture, as evident from the sad fado songs of shipwreck and loss or the untranslatable notion of saudade (nostalgia, sadness, longing). It also remains present in the particular form of millenarian popular Catholicism built around the return, at the end of times, of King Sebastian, the young monarch who, in 1578, perished along with most of the Portuguese nobility in their crushing defeat on the hands of Abd-Al-Malik, Sultan of Morocco, in the Battle of Alcácer-Quibir. Shortly before, the poet Luiz Vaz de Camões (who had spent most of his life as a trader in Calicut and Cochin, India) had composed The Lusiads, a celebration of Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India (1497-1499) and one of the first national epics of European literature. Only a year after Gama returned from the Kerala coast, Pedro Álvares Cabral had given notice to King Manuel of the ‘discovery’ of Brazil. Yet colonial expansion also soon overstretched Portugal’s resources, and its sea power was being disputed, first, by the Dutch (who conquered parts of Portuguese-occupied Pernambuco and Angola), then by the French and British. The conflicts between rival imperial powers also resonated in the North Atlantic, where English pirates went after the Portuguese cod-fishing fleets off the coast of Labrador, Newfoundland, and Maine, and even in New York City, where, in the mid-seventeenth century, a group of Jewish refugees from the Inquisition arrived from Recife, Brazil. In this section of the course, we shall look at how literature and the arts both celebrated imperial expansion and denounced its hubris. We will also ask for the ‘visions of the vanquished’: how was colonization represented, and contested, by Amerindian and African people subjected to slavery and the forced occupation of their territories? How have their cultural memories been maintained, and recovered, in postcolonial writing and filmmaking of recent decades?

Week 2 A Passage to India 2/4

Amália Rodrigues, ‘Naufrágio’ (Shipwreck), fado song Mariza, ‘Barco Negro’ (Black Boat), fado song Fernando Arenas, ‘Portugal: Ideas of Empire and Nationhood,’ in Utopias of Otherness:

Nationhood and Subjectivity in Portugal and Brazil (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003): 34-54.

2/6 Fernão Mendes Pinto, Peregrinação (1614) / The Travels of Fernão Mendes Pinto, ed.

and transl. Rebecca D. Catz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 1-4, 125-137, 144-53, 445-70, 493-500, 521-23.

Roger Crowley, ‘The First Global Empire,’ History Today, October 2015: 10-17.

Week 3 Colonial Expansion and National Epic2/11

Luiz Vaz de Camões, Os Lusíadas (1572) / The Lusiads, transl. Landeg White (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 197-228.

Michael Murrin, ‘Camões and the Discovery of India: the Negative Side’, in Trade and Romance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013): 123-53.

5

2/13 Luiz Vaz de Camões, Os Lusíadas (1572) / The Lusiads, transl. Landeg White (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1997), 1-6, 90-97, 139-41. Helder Macedo, ‘The Politics of Truth in The Lusiads,’ in The Traveling Eye:

Retrospection, Vision, and Prophecy in the Portuguese Renaissance (Dartmouth: University of Massachussetts, 2009): 15-37

Posting 1: 250-300 words with your response to Mendes Pinto OR Camões. To be posted on Forums on NYU Classes by midnight 2/16.

Week 4 ‘Discovering’ Brazil - ‘Discovering’ the Portuguese2/18 Instructor: Fan Fan

Pero Vaz de Caminha, Carta ao Rei Dom Manoel’ (1500) / Letter to D. Manuel of Portugal, transl. Clive Willis and Stuart Schwartz (in Early Brazil. A Documentary Collection to 1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1-9.

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, ‘Who was Pero Vaz de Caminha?’, Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies 4/5 (2000): 423-34.

Adriana Varejão, Histórias às Margens (At the Margins), artworks, 1991-2012

2/20 Film: Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Como Era Gostoso o Meu Francês (How Tasty Was

My Little Frenchman, Brazil 1970) Davi Kopenawa, ‘First Contacts,’ in The Falling Sky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 2013): 168-184.

Week 5 The Portuguese Atlantic: Slavery, Inquisition, and Resistance2/25

Anonymous, ‘The War Against Palmares,’ in The Brazil Reader (Durham, NC: Duke, 2013): 125-130.

Richard Burton, ‘Slave Life at Morro Velho Mine,’ in The Brazil Reader (Durham, NC: Duke, 2013): 131-134.

Film: Caca Diegues, Quilombo (Brazil 1984)

EXCURSIONS: Congregation Shearith Israel – The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Upper West Side; Luso-American Cultural Center (Carroll, Gardens, Brooklyn), ‘Little Brazil’, Midtown Manhattan. We will try to organize group visits; participation recommended but entirely optional. Students unable to take part in the group visit are welcome to make their own arrangements for visiting at a day and time of their convenience.

2/27 Darlene Abreu-Ferreira, ‘Terra Nova Through the Iberian Looking Glass: the Portuguese

Newfoundland Cod Fishery in the Sixteenth Century,’ Canadian Historical Review 79, 1 (1998): 100-117.

Ann Helen Wainer, ‘The Brazilian Origins of New York’s Jews,’ in Jewish and Brazilian Connections to New York, India, and Ecology (iUniverse 2012)

Posting 2: 250-300 words on the excursion to Shearith Israel the Luso-American Cultural Center, or Little Brazil. To be posted on Forums on NYU Classes by midnight 3/1.

6

2. Revolution, Decolonization, and Post-Colonial Identities

The Salazar regime, which maintained an iron grip on power in Portugal from 1932 to 1974, also brutally defended colonial rule in Africa, India and Asia. Yet, after the end of World War II, national liberation movements emerged all across the Global South, ultimately leading not only to the independence of most of Portugal’s remaining colonies (Brazil had already declared independence in 1822) but also to the overthrow of the Portuguese dictatorship by a coup of leftist army officers who had become tired of colonial warfare. Decolonization and Thirld World anti-imperialism were not just political but also cultural movements, advocating a re-appraisal of native and popular forms of poetic and musical expression, or —as in the case of Brazilian ‘Cinema Novo’ (New Cinema)— attempting to integrate these with modern media such as film in order to forge a new, revolutionary kind of national expression. In this section of the course, we will first read some key texts of ‘Luso-tropicalist’ colonial ideology, to then analyze some of the filmic and literary testimonies of decolonization struggle in Africa and Portugal as well as Brazil. Finally, we will study the bitter aftermath of independence in Angola and Mozambique, when both countries became embroiled in civil war.

Week 63/3 Luso-Tropicalism and/as Colonial Ideology

Gilberto Freyre, Casa-Grande e Senzala (1933) / The Masters and the Slaves, transl. Samuel Putnam (Berkeley: University of California, 1987), 3-7, 278-340.

Gilberto Freyre, ‘On Brazilians as Luso-Tropical Men’ and ‘On Seeing Negroes in Africa,’ in The Gilberto Freyre Reader (New York: Knopf, 1974): 86-87, 93-94.

Anna M. Klobucka, ‘Love Is All You Need: Lusophone Affective Communities After Freyre,’ in Gender, Empire, and Postcolony: Luso-Afro-Brazilian Intersections (New York: Palgrave, 2014): 33-47.

3/5 Luso-African Independence: Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau Amílcar Cabral, National Liberation and Culture,’ in Return to the Source: Selected

Speeches by Amílcar Cabral (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973): 39-56. Amílcar Cabral, Poems (Selection from Gerald M. Moser, ‘The Poet Amílcar Cabral,’ in

Research in African Literatures 9:2, 1978): 176-197. Film: Diana Andringa and Flora Gomes, As Duas Faces da Guerra (The Two Sides of

War, Guinea-Bissau 2008)

Week 7 Luso-African Independence 3/24 Angola

José Luandino Vieira, ‘Grandma Xíxi and her Grandson Zeca Santos,’ in Luuanda (Heinemann 1980), 1-29.

Uanhenga Xitu, ‘”Mestre” Tamoda,’ in The World of ‘Mestre’ Tamoda (Readers International, 1984): 1-19.

3/26 Mozambique Film: Margarida Cardoso, Kuxa Kanema. The Birth of Cinema (Portugal/Moçambique

2004. 52”) Photographs and pamphlets from the Mozambican independence struggle (FRELIMO,

Committee for a Free Mozambique NYC), Chilcote Collection

7

Week 8 The Carnation Revolution: Overthrowing Dictatorship in Portugal3/31

José Afonso, ‘Grândola, vila morena’, folk song José Carlos Ary dos Santos, As Portas Que Abril Abriu (1975) / The Doors That April

Opened, transl. Deolindo Adão and Claude Henry Potts (Berkeley: University of California, 2014), 4-50

Raquel Varela, A People’s History of the Carnation Revolution (London: Pluto Press 2018): 16-31, 194-211.

4/2 In-class Midterm Exam

Week 9 Luso-Africa After Independence

4/7 Angola Film: Maria João Ganga, Na Cidade Vazia (Hollow City, Angola 2004) Reading: Fernando Arenas, ‘Lusophone Africa on Screen: After Utopia and before the

End of Hope,’ in Lusophone Africa: Beyond Independence (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011): 9-24.

4/14 Mozambique Reading: Terra Sonâmbula (1992) / Sleepwalking Land, transl. David Brookshaw

(London: Serpent’s Tail 2006), 1-27, 84-99, 203-13. Film, Teresa Prata, Terra Sonâmbula (Sleepwalking Land, Mozambique 2009)

Posting 3: 250-300 words with your response to ONE of the texts and films studied in the sessions on the Carnation Revolution OR on Luso-Africa after independence. To be posted on Forums on NYU Classes by midnight 4/17.

3. Diaspora: Memory and Migration in the Lusophone Postcolonial World

How have memories of colonialism, migration and diaspora informed cultural expressions in the Portuguese-speaking world of recent decades? In this final part of the course, we will study representations of Afro-diasporic populations and colonial legacies in contemporary Portuguese cinema, as well as ask about the ways in which the contested legacies of Portuguese colonialism have been taken up, and transformed, in some of the most popular and widely distributed forms of mass culture, such as carnival and soccer, that continue being practiced and celebrated all across the former Portuguese empire. We shall conclude with a journey through the rich, and multiply interconnected, soundscape of the Lusophone postcolonial world, from Brazil to Macau and East Timor.

Week 10 African Diaspora and the Memory of Colonialism4/21

Film: Miguel Gomes, Tabu (Portugal 2012) Paulo de Medeiros, ‘Post-Imperial Nostalgia and Miguel Gomes’ Tabu,’ Interventions:

International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 18, 2 (2016): 203-16.

8

4/23 Instructor: Francisco Quinteiro Pires Film: Pedro Costa, Juventude em Marcha (Colossal Youth, Portugal 2008) Nuno Barradas Jorge, ‘Thinking of Portugal, Looking at Cape Verde: Notes on

Representations of Immigrants in the Films of Pedro Costa,’ in Migration in Lusophone Cinema, ed. Cacilda Rêgo and Marcus Brasileiro (New York: Palgrave, 2014), 41-57.

Posting 4: 250-300 words giving your response to EITHER Miguel Gomes’s Tabu OR Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth. To be posted on Forums on NYU Classes by midnight 4/26.

Week 11 Arts of the Diaspora4/28 Carnival

Reading: Roberto Da Matta, ‘The Many Levels of Carnival,’ in Carnivals, Rogues, and Heroes. An Interpretation of the Brazilian Dilemma (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1991): 61-100.

Film: Marcel Camus, Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus, Brazil/France 1959) Video footage from carnival parades in Bahia, Goa, Macau, Dili

4/30 Soccer Richard Follett, ‘The Spirit of Brazil: Football and the Politics of Afro-Brazilian Cultural

Identity,’ in Recharting the Black Atlantic: Modern Cultures, Local Communities, Global Connections, ed. Analisa Oboe and Anna Scacchi Abingdon: Routledge, 2008): 71-92.

Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Garrincha, a Alegria do Povo (Garrincha, Joy of the People. Brazil 1968. 57”)

Footage of Brazil’s ‘Golden Generation’ at the World Cup (1958-1970)

Posting 5: 250-300 words with your response to carnival and soccer as diasporic arts. To be posted on Forums on NYU Classes by midnight 5/3.

Week 125/5 Music

Marc Hertzman, ‘”Our Music”. “Pelo Telefonoe”, the Oito Batutas, and the Rise of “Samba”,’ in Making Samba. A New History of Race and Music in Brazil (Duke 2013): 94-115.

Fernando Arenas, ‘Cesária Évora and the Globalization of Cape Verdian Music,’ in Lusophone Africa: Beyond Independence (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011): 45-101.

Musical samples from Pixiguinha, Cartola, Cesária Évora, Chico Science & Nação Zumbi, and from Luso-Asian musical styles from Goa, Sri Lanka, Macau and East Timor

5/7 A Portuguese postcolonialism? Boaventura de Sousa Santos, ‘Between Prospero and Caliban: Colonialism,

Postcolonialism, and Inter-Identity,’ Luso-Brazilian Review 39, 2 (2002): 9-43. Film: Sérgio Tréfaut, Lisboetas (Lisboners, 2004)

Week 13

9

5/12 Wrap-up. Discussion of course content. What can we learn from Portuguese expansion and its aftermath? In what ways does it allows to read colonialism and modernity otherwise?

5/19 – FINAL EXAM

10