Officers (2012-2014)
President
Jan Hoffman French
Department of Anthropology
University of Richmond
(Ph.D. Cultural Anthropology, Duke University; J.D. University of Connecticut School of Law) Jan is Assoctiate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Richmond. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Notre Dame, Northwestern University, and the University of Maryland, College Park. French has published articles in American Ethnologist, American Anthropologist, The Americas, and Political and Legal Anthropology Review. Her book, Legalizing Identities: Becoming Black or Indian in Northeastern Brazil was published by University of North Carolina Press in Spring 2009. Before becoming an anthropologist, French practiced law.
Vice President
Anthony Pereira
Brazil Institute
King's College London
Pereira’s current work concerns citizenship, human rights, public security, and state coercion in Brazil. This includes a study of the performance of a relatively new human rights institution, the police ombudsman, in two different states in Brazil, as well as an analysis of some recent efforts to reform the police. Pereira has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA) and is an occasional commentator for BBC Brazil.
Former President
Randal Johnson
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
University of California, Los Angeles
Illinois Secretariat
Executive Director
Brigitte Cairus
University of Illinois
Brigitte Grossmann Cairus is a Brazilian-Canadian PhD candidate at York University focusing on Modern Latin American Cultural History. Her dissertation focuses on modern Brazilian Gypsy/Romanie culture, identity, material culture, migration, politics and religiosity between 1936 and 2007. She earned her M.A. in History at York University (Toronto, Canada) and her B.A. in Fine Arts at the State University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. In Brazil Brigitte was the co-owner, designer and production manager of Ariadne Tapetes Artesanais, a carpet factory in Minas Gerais, Brazil (1996-2002). In Canada Brigitte was the coordinator of CERLAC’s Brazilian Studies Seminar at York University (2008-09), the Vice President of the Brazil-Canada Chamber of Commerce - BCCC in Toronto (2009-10), Associate Course Director to the 2011 Summer Course on Refugee Issues at the Centre for Refugees Studies and a executive member at the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean - CERLAC - York University.
Marcelo Boccato Kuyumjian
University of Illinois
Executive Commitee Members
Vânia Penha-Lopes
Department of Sociology
Bloomfield College
Vânia Penha-Lopes is Professor of Sociology at Bloomfield College, in New Jersey. A native of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, she is a graduate of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Bachelor’s, Social Sciences, with distinction) and New York University (M.A., Anthropology; Ph.D., Sociology). As a post-doctoral fellow at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, she did research on the first graduating class of Brazilian university quota students. Professor Penha-Lopes is co-chair of the Brazil Seminar at Columbia University, co-director of the Center for Alternative Visions at Bloomfield College, a member of the executive committee of the Brazilian Studies Association (2010-14), and a columnist for Afropres. She has received a number of awards, including the Carter G. Woodson Institute Predoctoral Fellowship in Afro-American and African Studies, from the University of Virginia, and the Scholarship for Study Abroad from the Encyclopaedia Britannica do Brasil. She has lectured extensively and published on comparative race relations, African American fatherhood, and racism in Brazil.
Sonia Ranincheski
Research Center and Graduate Program on the Americas
University of Brasilia (CEPPAC/UnB)
Sonia Ranincheski is Social Scientist and Researcher on political sociology, political culture and political elites in Brazil and the Americas. Currently she teaches at the Research Center and Graduate Program on the Americas, the University of Brasilia (CEPPAC/UnB). She has published numerous articles in reviews, both in Brazil and abroad, and her more recent books are Elite e trabalho no Brasil e Uruguai: a origem do debate (2010), Desafios aos Direitos Humanos no Brasil (2011) and Américas compartilhadas (2009).
Marianne Schmink
Latin American Studies and Anthropology
University of Florida
Marianne Schmink is Professor of Latin American Studies and Anthropology at the University of Florida, where she served Director of the Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) program from 1988-2010. She has co-authored (with Charles H. Wood) Contested Frontiers in Amazonia (Columbia University Press, 1992), and (with Mâncio Lima Cordeiro) Rio Branco: A Cidade da Florestania (2008, UFPa/UFAC), in addition to three edited books, and over fifty articles, book chapters, and reports. Dr. Schmink has had grants from the Mellon Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Hewlett Foundation and Moore Foundation to support collaborative research and training programs at UF and in Latin America.
Bryan McCann
Department of History
Georgetown University
Bryan McCann is an Associate Professor of Brazilian History at Georgetown University. His most recent work, Hard Times in the Marvelous City: From Dictatorship to Democracy in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro (Duke, 2013) explores the political relationship between Rio's favelas and municipal and state government. His previous works analyze radio and popular music in Brazil from the 1930s through the '50s, and the dominant themes in Brazilian culture and politics since redemocratization.
James Green
Department of History
Brown University
James N. Green is Professor of History and Brazilian Studies at Brown University. He is the author of the award-winning books Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil (University of Chicago Press, 1999; Editora da UNESP, 2000) and We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States (Companhia das Letras, 2009; Duke University Press, 2010), several other Portuguese-language edited collections, and numerous articles about gender, sexuality, and politics in Brazil. He is co-editor with Thomas E. Skidmore and Peter T. Smith of Modern Latin America (Oxford University Press, 8th edition), and lead co-editor with Victoria Langland and Lilia Schwarcz of The Brazil Reader: History, Politics, Culture (Duke University Press, forthcoming). He is currently working on a biography of Herbert Daniel (1946-92), a Brazilian medical student turned guerrilla fighter, political exile, writer, and AIDS activist. Green served as President of BRASA from 2002-2004 and the Chair of the Conference on the Future of Brazilian Studies in the United States held at Brown University in 2005.
Steve Butterman
Department of Modern Languages and Literature
University of Miami
Steve Butterman is the Director of Women's and Gender Studies Program at University of Miami. His first book came out in 2005 with San Diego State University Press, Perversions on Parade: Brazilian Literature of Transgression and Postmodern Anti-Aesthetics in Glauco Mattoso analyzes “marginal” cultural production, specifically examining the motif of homosexuality and its repression and regulation under the military dictatorship. His current book treats Queer Identities and LGBT Culture in Brazil Today, studies recent sociopolitical developments in the gay rights movement, with chapters devoted to careful analysis of the discourses of NGOs and governmental agencies established to promote human rights for gender identity and sexual minorities in contemporary Brazil. Currently, he is in the process of finishing a third book, which is scheduled to go into production in early 2012 and is under contract with a major press in Brazil, SJT Saúde, Educação, Cultura e Editora. This study will be published in Portuguese and is entitled (in English translation): Witnessing (In)Visibility: Journalistic Representations of the Largest Gay Pride Parade on the Planet.
Gladys Mitchell-Walthour
Department of Political Science
Denison University
Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour is currently an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Denison University. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Chicago (2008) and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Duke University and Johns Hopkins University.
John Burdick
Department of Anthropology
Syracuse University
John S. Burdick is a a professor of anthropology at Syracuse University. His scholarship over the past twenty years has focused on the intersection of Brazilian religion and politics. Looking for God in Brazil (U of California Press, 1993) studied the competition between pentecostalism, umbanda and liberationist Catholicism; Blessed Anastacia (Routledge, 1998) analyzed the racial politics of several of Brazil’s popular Christianities; Legacies of Liberation (Ashgate, 2004) looked at the continuing influence of liberationist Catholicism in post Cold-war Brazil; and The Color of Sound (NYU Press, 2012) investigates the connection between music and black consciousness in Brazil’s Protestant churches.
Rebecca Atencio
Spanish and Portuguese Department
Tulane University
Rebecca Atencio is an assistant professor of Brazilian literary and cultural studies at Tulane University, where she also directs the undergraduate Portuguese program. She joined the Tulane faculty in 2009 as Assistant Professor of Luso-Brazilian Literary and Cultural Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Portuguese from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on contemporary Brazilian literature and popular culture, with particular attention to their intersection with human rights activism.
Brodwyn Fischer
Department of History
Northwestern University
Brodwyn Fisher is an Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University, where she directed the Latin American Studies Program from 2005-2010. She has been studying, researching, and teaching Brazilian history since 1992. She received her Ph.D. in Brazilian and Latin American History from Harvard University in 1999. Her own research has focused on issues of citizenship, law, race, local politics, and urban history in Rio de Janeiro and Recife, from the late 19th century to the present.