BRASA

Vice-Presidente

RANDAL JOHNSON

I am honored to submit my candidacy for the position of Vice President of BRASA. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin (1977), where I wrote a dissertation on Joaquim Pedro de Andrade’s 1969 adaptation of Mário de Andrade’s modernist classic, Macunaíma. Since that time I have taught at Rutgers University (1977-83), the University of Florida (1983-1994), and UCLA (1994-present), where I currently serve as director of the Latin American Institute. I have chaired two departments (Romance Languages and Literatures at UF, 1982-83; Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA, 1996-2001) and served as director of the University of California’s Education Abroad Program in Brazil (2002-04). I am currently on the steering committee of the California state senate’s Brazil-California Partnership Initiative. In 1999 I received the Ordem do Cruzeiro do Sul for my efforts in promoting Brazilian culture in the United States.

My research has focused largely on Brazilian literature and cinema. My books include Brazilian Cinema (1982, 1988, 1995; co-edited with Robert Stam), Literatura e Cinema: Macunaíma do Modernismo na Literatura ao Cinema Novo (1982), Cinema Novo X 5: Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Film (1984), The Film Industry in Brazil: Culture and the State (1987), Tropical Paths: Essays on Modern Brazilian Literature (1993), Antônio das Mortes (1998), Black Brazil: Culture, Identity and Social Mobilization (1999; co-edited with Larry Crook), and Manoel de Oliveira (2007). I also edited and wrote the introduction to Pierre Bourdieu’s The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (1993). My scholarship has long been interdisciplinary, and I have a special interest in the sociology of culture and questions related to state policy toward the arts and particularly the film industry.

The Future of Brazilian Studies in the United States" outlines a broad and ambitious agenda for BRASA. Significant components of that agenda-such as the creation of a consortium of Brazilian studies programs and the development of a centralized website-are well underway. As Vice President of BRASA I will work with the President and the Executive Committee to implement the rest of the agenda. Since that will require funding beyond that provided by current membership dues, my specific focus will be on building and strengthening connections with foundations, government agencies, and other organizations in the United States and Brazil as a means of leveraging support for the organization's programs and goals, establishing a solid endowment, and enhancing the association's national and international intellectual profile. Concurrently, I will help explore ways to increase the organization's membership base. Through proactive and collaborative leadership I hope to live up to the examples set by my predecessors.

MAXINE MARGOLIS

I earned my Ph.D. at Columbia University and have been on the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida for over three decades. My research specialties include Brazil, frontier cultivation, international migration and shifting gender roles in the United States. My initial research in Brazil focused on the adaptive strategies of coffee cultivators in northern Paraná, the reasons for the expansion and subsequent decline of coffee cultivation in that region and the social and economic consequences of the substitution of a labor intensive economy—coffee cultivation—for a land extensive one—cattle ranching.

Over the last fifteen years my research and writing concerning Brazil have had different focus: Brazilian emigration to the United States. In the early 1990s, I carried out the first academic study of this new migrant stream which resulted in the publication of two books, Little Brazil: Brazilian Immigrants in New York City (Princeton, 1994) and An Invisible Minority: Brazilians in New York City (Allyn & Bacon 1998), as well as numerous articles and book chapters. A revised, updated edition of An Invisible Minority will be published in late 2008 by the University Press of Florida. As part of this new research interest, I developed the “Bibliography of Brazilian Emigration” which appears on BRASA’s web site and, in an article that was published in the LASA Forum, I suggested ways that the Brazilian immigrant community in the United States could become involved in Brazilian Studies.

I have been a member of BRASA’s Executive Committee for the past three years. During that time I have become familiar with the organization and workings of BRASA including the role of the smoothly run Secretariat at Vanderbilt led by Marshall Eakin and a very able staff. While Chair of BRASA’s Membership Committee, the names and contact information of nearly 200 Brazilianists were collected, primarily academics in the humanities and social sciences. The Secretariat then e-mailed a letter outlining the benefits of BRASA membership to would-be members and invited them to join. As an EC member I have also been active on the committee that nominates candidates for BRASA’s Lifetime Contribution Award.

As Vice-President I would continue efforts to increase BRASA’s membership and would make a special attempt to attract people with interests in Brazil who are not academics—artists, musicians, writers, journalists and the like. I also want to attract scholars with interests in Brazil from disciplines currently under-represented in BRASA—economists and natural scientists, in particular. And given my long interest in and research on Brazilian immigration to the U.S., I would lead efforts to sign up leaders and activists in Brazilian immigrant communities around the U.S.

Comite Executivo

PAULO ROBERTO DE ALMEIDA

Born in São Paulo, 1949, I’m Ph.D. in Social Sciences (Free University of Brussels, 1984), Master in Economic Planning (College for Developing Countries, State University of Antwerpen, 1977), and a career diplomat since 1977. I started my undergraduate studies in Social Sciences at Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences of the University of São Paulo, but left at the second year, during military dictatoship.

Since late 2003, I have been dissertation director at the Master in Diplomacy program in Instituto Rio Branco (Diplomatic Academy) of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and since early 2004, I’m professor of International Political Economy at the Master in Law program at the Centro Universitário de Brasília (Uniceub).

Prior to my current positions, I was Minister-Counselor at the Brazilian Embassy in Washington (1999-2003) and Special Advisor to the head of the Strategic Affairs Unit of the Brazilian Presidency, in Brasilia (2003-2007). Previous assignments include Brazilian embassies in Paris, Berne and Beograd, and at Brazilian delegations to international organizations in Geneva (GATT and other UNO organizations) and Montevideo (Aladi). At the Ministry of Foreign Affairas, I was head of the Financial Policy Division (1996-99).

Among my many books published are:

O estudo das relações internacionais do Brasil (2006); Relações Brasil-Estados Unidos: assimetrias e convergências (2005); Formação da diplomacia econômica no Brasil (2005); Relações internacionais e política externa do Brasil (2004); Une Histoire du Brésil: pour comprendre le Brésil contemporain (2002); Os primeiros anos do século XXI: o Brasil e as relações internacionais contemporâneas (2002); Le Mercosud: un marché commun pour l’Amérique du Sud (2000); O Brasil e o multilateralismo econômico (1999); O Mercosul no contexto regional e internacional (1993); O Moderno Príncipe: Maquiavel revisitado (forthcoming).

Having co-organized, with Marshall C. Eakin, the critical assessment about the work of American brazilianists, published as Envisioning Brazil: a Guide to Brazilian Studies in the United States, 1945-2000 (2005), I think I have some “comparative advantages” to work on their behalf in the endeavor of preparation and organization of BRASA-X, to be held in Brasilia, middle of 2010. I’m helping to prepare an exhibition on the work of Brazilianists, to be held at Museum of the Republic, Brasilia, as well as a “Brasilianista collection”, intended to be given to the new “National Library” of Brasília. I’m fully engaged in this task for now and the next two years, in cooperation with other Brazilian scholars and colleagues of the UnB.

JUDY BIEBER

I am an historian who specializes in the dyamics of frontier societies, race and ethnicity in Brazil. Most of my research has focused on the Imperial period and the province/state of Minas Gerais. Since receiving my Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University in 1994, I have taught Latin American and Brazilian history, historiography, and historical theory at the University of New Mexico. I have an interdisciplinary background including a B.A. in anthropology from Rutgers University (1987).

I became interested in participating more actively in the governance of BRASA after attending BRASA VIII at Vanderbilt in October 2006. I had previously participated on the program committeee in 200? This year, I was appointed program committee chair for BRASA IX to be held next March in New Orleans. I also attended the BRASA Executive Committee meeting at LASA in Montreal last September. I have been impressed with the sense of community that one experiences at BRASA-organized events, unique in my personal experience with academic professional organizations.

If I am elected to the EC, I would like to develop a project that would be linked to BRASA's new jeitoportal website. My goal is to develop a comprehensive directory of digital resources relevant to Brazilian Studies. I envision two stages to this project. The first would be to comprehensively catalog existing sites and post links on the jeito website. The second, which is considerably more ambitious and would likely require outside sources of funding, would be to identify and digitize sources that are in the public domain but would be otherwise difficult to access. I know many scholars who have copies of published government documents, rare pamphlets or special editions of works that are fundamental to the study of Brazil. Making such materials more readily available would be an invaluable service that BRASA could contribute to the community of Brazil-oriented scholars.

CRISTINA FERREIRA-PINTO BAILEY

I would be honored to serve on BRASA’s Executive Committee and help the Association pursue its mission of promoting Brazilian studies in the United States and in the rest of the world. I am particularly interested in helping BRASA continue to strengthen the ties between US Brazilianists and scholars in Brazil, through the annual conference, as well as by facilitating the creation of interest groups focusing on specific interdisciplinary topics. I also would like to help BRASA identify new funding sources that would allow the Association to expand its initiatives to foster Brazilian studies. I see my collaboration with BRASA as a continuation of the work I have done during my career as a Brazilian scholar and university professor in the US. Over the years, I have worked to promote Portuguese and Brazilian culture and literature, serving in many different professional organizations, such as the MLA and AATSP; serving on several editorial boards of academic journals; organizing numerous conference panels and symposia; and coordinating visits to the US by Brazilian writers, among other initiatives. This past year, I nominated Professor Gregory Rabassa for the BRASA Lifetime Contribution Award, which the Nominating Committee supported. I also organized a panel for the upcoming BRASA conference at Tulane University, on Brazilian urban narrative.

I expect my service on the Executive Committee to also be an expansion of my work as a scholar. Among my contributions to the field of Brazilian literature, I would like to point out my 1990 book, O “Bildungsroman” feminino: quatro exemplos brasileiros (São Paulo: Perspectiva), a book that to this day continues to be widely used and quoted by scholars and students of literature working on Brazilian women authors and gender issues. Other intellectual contributions to the field include my 2004 book Gender, Discourse and Desire in Twentieth-Century Brazilian Women's Literature (Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures), and the 2007 book, co-edited with Regina Zilberman, Clarice Lispector. Novos aportes críticos (Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana). In an effort to help promote Brazilian literature in the US, I have also translated Brazilian poetry and fiction, including Ignácio de Loyola Brandão’s Teeth Under the Sun (Dalkey Archive Press, 2007).

ZEPHYR FRANK

It is an honor to run for a place as a member of the BRASA Executive Committee. My background as a scholar is in Brazilian social and economic history, but I am very much interested in the whole array of research conducted by members of BRASA?in Brazil, the U.S., and beyond. To this end, I would seek, as other members of the executive committee have sought in the past, to integrate our membership into a vibrant and cross-disciplinary network based on mutual interest and respect. My first order of business, if elected, will be to learn as much as possible from current and outgoing BRASA officers. The organization is in great condition; my aim would be to work hard to maintain that degree of success and to build on it with my fellow officers and the rest of the membership.

I am currently Assistant Professor of Latin American and Brazilian history at Stanford University, where I have taught since 2000. Recent publications include my book, Dutra's World: Wealth and Family in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (New Mexico, 2004), and, with Carlos Marichal, Steven Topik and nearly a dozen other outstanding collaborators, the edited volume From Silver to Cocaine (Duke, 2006). My current research, which is highly interdisciplinary and involves close collaboration with scholars at Brown University and UNICAMP, centers on the spatial history of nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro. My component of this project is hosted by the Spatial History Lab at Stanford: http://www.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/. Working together with a diverse team of historians and geographers, and building up an ongoing research project with colleagues in Brazil, has provided me with experience I would put to work in the interests of BRASA.

ELIZABETH KIDDY

I am an associate professor of history and the director of a Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program at Albright College, a small liberal arts college in Eastern Pennsylvania. In my position, I have many opportunities to think about Latin America in a broad sense, and find ways to include Brazil in those larger discussions in my classes, as part of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and in the larger community. I believe that one of the roles of an organization like BRASA is to enable scholars like me, who continue their work in Brazil but are generalists in their jobs, to come together and find ways help each other to generate interest in, and educate people about, Brazil. The organization also provides networks for scholars at all different types of academic institutions throughout the world to work together to further the same agenda. My first goal as a BRASA Executive Board member will be to finds ways to continue the good work already being done at BRASA in sustaining an active network of scholars and students interested in Brazil.

My second goal as a member of the BRASA Executive Board will be to work towards building ties with non-academic organizations that are already engaged in projects and collaborations with Brazil and/or interested in fostering ties with Brazil. I am currently working on a research project on the idea of geography and power in nineteenth century Brazil, focusing on debates about and projects on the São Francisco River during that century. That project has opened opportunities to establish ties with Universidade Salvador (UNIFACS), in Bahia, and the Partners of the Americas Eastern Pennsylvania, which is partnered with Salvador, Bahia. Working with Partners has demonstrated to me the benefits that can come from this type of collaboration, and as a BRASA Board member I would work to find ways to continue to move towards a broader reach for the organization.

I have been an alternate on the Board for a year and a half, and have gained a better understanding of the culture and functioning of the Board and the organization as a whole. A full term as a Board member will allow me to build on what I have learned and to move forward with the goals outlined above.

MARK LOKENSGARD

Among the challenges that Brazilian Studies faces in the United States, one is the key to long-term growth: expanding the number and type of institutions with Portuguese language programs. BRASA can help in two ways.

The first is by providing support to those new faculty, almost always assistant professors, who are hired to start or revitalize Portuguese programs. New hires in Portuguese face not only the challenge of getting tenure in today’s competitive job market; they must also demonstrate the relevance of Portuguese, Brazilian Studies, and the feasibility of Portuguese programs. They are often required to design courses, curricula, degrees, and study abroad programs from scratch, even as they keep current in their fields and produce articles and books.

BRASA can help by boosting new faculty up the steep learning curve of the design and administration of programs by providing program models, by promoting the exchange of ideas among the new hires at different institutions, and by offering advice from more experienced Brazilianists. This would help new Brazilianists to make connections between Portuguese language programs and other programs at their institutions, and create more support and a sense of ownership from their non-Brazilianist colleagues and administrators.

The second way that BRASA can help is by providing advice and guidance to administrators at institutions that do not currently have a Portuguese language program, but that do have one or more Brazilianists in one of the other disciplines, often within the social sciences. BRASA could provide help to these scholars in identifying potential allies in other departments and programs, models of Portuguese language programs at peer institutions, and potential sources of funding. In short, they could help make the case for Portuguese language programs at institutions that already have faculty expertise in Brazilian Studies, but lack the language programs necessary to produce new Brazilianists in the U.S.

My work as part of one of the American Council on Education’s Internationalization Laboratories and my work as one of the developers of the Southern Cone Studies Program (recipient of a Title VI grant) has given me perspective and insight into how Brazilian Studies can grow through a variety of synergies across disciplines, across schools, and by promoting combinations of student research, faculty development, and service learning. Having gone through the process of starting a Portuguese program myself, I would like to provide the kind of support that would help new programs to take root and grow, benefiting Brazilian Studies as a whole. I ask for your input to accomplish this and for your support to serve on the Executive Committee.

MARIANNE SCHMINK

A relative newcomer to BRASA, I have worked in Brazil for over 30 years since I began my dissertation research in 1976 on a working-class neighborhood in Belo Horizonte. After completing my Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, I moved to the University of Florida where I worked closely with the late Prof. Charles Wagley to establish an interdisciplinary program on the Amazon region. To date this Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) program, which I direct, has graduated over 200 students from diverse fields who are interested in the interface between conservation and development in Latin America, especially Brazilian Amazonia. My co-authored book (with Charles H. Wood), Contested Frontiers in Amazonia (Columbia Press, 1992), which chronicles the tumultuous frontier of land conflicts, goldminers, loggers and migrant farmers, is currently being translated for publication in Brazil.

I serve as a member of the BRASA Roberto Reis Book Prize Committee, 2007-2008, and am also the University of Florida representative to the Consortium on Brazilian Studies (COBRAS). As a member of the BRASA Executive Committee, I would look for opportunities to recruit members from the areas of biology, ecology, and conservation that are currently under-represented in BRASA, as well as reaching out to Brazilian scholars in the Amazon region. In December, 2007, I helped to organize a workshop in Manaus, to which we invited professors and graduate students from post-graduate programs in the Amazon region in areas related to biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. I introduced this new audience to BRASA and distributed postcards advertising BRASA IX. In addition to these recruitment efforts, I would also look forward to contributing to strategies for increasing the funding base for BRASA, using what I have learned from building program funds and endowments at UF.

BRIAN WAMPLER

I seek to serve on BRASA’s executive committee to promote the exchange of collaborative social science research projects that are guided by deep historical and cultural understandings of Brazil as well as by efforts to advance key theoretical debates. My research interests focus on civil society and subnational democratic institutions (conselhos gestores,orçamento participativo). My research is comparative in nature—I use a subnational comparative approach within Brazil to demonstrate how variations in civil society and political society at the municipal level affect the functioning of actual, existing democratic institutions. As a non-native Brazilianist the benefit of this comparative approach is that I have developed a rich understanding of the multifaceted characteristics of Brazil’s culture, society, history, and politics because I have lived, studied, and conducted research in three of Brazil’s five regions. I believe that my wide range of experience makes me particularly well qualified to serve on the BRASA executive committee because I have an in-depth understanding of the pressures placed on U.S. and Brazilian academics as we seek to secure resources and support to carry out high-quality research. I am currently an assistant professor in the department of political science at Boise State University.

I have spent three years living, studying, and conducting research in Brazil. As a third year graduate student, I spent one year (two academic semesters) studying at UNICAMP (bolsa sanduiche), taking graduate-level courses in political science, sociology, and anthropology. These courses greatly deepened my knowledge of Brazil by providing me with direct access to Brazilian scholars and graduate students. I spent a second year in Brazil working on my doctoral dissertation, which focused on three cities: Recife, Porto Alegre, and São Paulo, thereby giving me the opportunity to study local politics in these different political environments. Finally, I spent a post-doctoral year at USP and FGV (São Paulo), from which I conducted a study of eight municipal-level Participatory Budgeting programs. A book resulted from this post-doctoral research: Participatory Budgeting in Brazil: Contestation, Cooperation, and Accountability (Pennsylvania State Press, 2007). I have published several book chapters and journal articles in Brazil and have given at least a dozen professional and academic presentations in Brazil in an effort to connect my research findings to Brazilian scholarly and policy communities. I plan to spend the 2009-2010 academic year in Brazil (sabbatical leave), hopefully located at UFMG, which will be an added benefit for BRASA as it would have a U.S.-based member of the executive committee in residence in Brazil. I will again conduct comparative research, which will provide me the opportunity to travel around Brazil.

In sum, I believe this wide range of experiences working as a researcher in several regions of Brazil and studying the impact of politicians’ and civil society activists’ on the promotion of practices that are aimed at deepening the quality of Brazilian democracy, has positioned me well to serve on the executive committee of BRASA.