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Brazilian Initiation Scholarship Guidelines for Competition 2012
The Brazil Initiation Scholarship (BIS) is a key component of BRASA’s agenda to expand Brazilian Studies in the United States. BRASA invites applications from graduate and undergraduate students for a one-time $1,500 travel scholarship to do exploratory research or language study in Brazil. This scholarship targets aspiring Brazilianists with relatively little or no experience in Brazil. It seeks to contribute to the student’s initial trip (for a period from six weeks to three months), to heighten the student’s interest in Brazil, and deepen his/her commitment to Brazilian studies in the United States. Students are encouraged to combine this scholarship with other grants or awards.
Eligibility
Proposals for the BRASA BIS will be reviewed according to the following criteria:
Highest priority will be given to applicants who are outstanding college seniors, recent college graduates applying to graduate programs in Brazilian studies or in Latin American studies with the intent of focusing on Brazil, or new graduate students already focusing on Brazil;
Students from all disciplines in the humanities and social sciences are eligible. In exceptional cases, applications from the natural sciences will be given consideration (for example, someone in environmental sciences who is writing a dissertation on the Amazon or pollution in São Paulo and who plans to continue research on Brazil);
Preference will be given to those applicants who have little or no in-country experience in Brazil;
A student requesting funding to undertake an exploratory research trip should present evidence at the time of the application that he/she has achieved at least an intermediate level of competence in the Portuguese language sufficient to carry out the proposed research;
An applicant seeking support to undertake language studies should present evidence that after returning to the US he/she intends to continue studying Portuguese and plans to engage in research on Brazil;
Successful applicants may combine BIS with other grants, scholarships, or awards, as long as he/she specifies clearly how the funds are going to be spent (for example, the BRASA scholarship might be used to cover travel costs, while a grant from another source could be used for living expenses, etc.).
Application Process
A complete application (partial applications will not be considered)
will include the following documents: (NOTE THAT ALL OF THE DOCUMENTS EXCEPT FOR THE TRANSCRIPTS AND LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION MUST BE SUBMITTED AS ONE PDF OR MSWORD DOCUMENT)
The application cover page (download form);
(1) A two-page prospectus (double spaced, 12-point font);
(2) A two-page résumé or CV;
(3) A budget specifying how the $1500 will be spent;
(4) In the case of undergraduates or recent college graduates, a letter of intent to study Brazil in graduate school;
(5) If applying for exploratory research, include a two-page bibliography on the subject of study, and present evidence that the applicant has achieved at least an intermediate level of competence in Portuguese (competence can be demonstrated by a transcript or a letter from a university instructor of Portuguese);
(6) If applying for Portuguese language study, the name of the school should be specified;
(7) Proof of membership in BRASA
(8) Two letters of recommendation from professors; and
(9) Copies of undergraduate and graduate transcripts.
(The letters of recommendation and transcripts may be mailed directly to BRASA at the address below. All other materials should be submitted together either as PDF or MSWord files in a single email to brasa-illinois@illinois.edu.)
Evaluation Criteria and Selection Process
In order to be considered for the scholarship, the two-page prospectus should:
(1) Clearly and coherently outline the project’s engagement with Brazil;
(2) Demonstrate as precisely as possible the feasibility of the proposed project (exploratory research or language study) and how it will contribute to the student’s academic development;
(3) Briefly discuss the role the work undertaken in Brazil will play in shaping the applicant’s future course of academic study (for instance, it could be the seed project for a larger grant application, provide the basis of a paper prepared for presentation at a BRASA conference, or serve as the foundation for future research on Brazil).
Report
Upon completion of the research experience in Brazil, recipients are required to file a two-page, double-spaced report with the BRASA Executive Director summarizing their activities and identifying relevant academic outcomes. In addition, a statement accounting for the expenditure of funds must be sent to the BRASA Executive Director. If the scholarship was used to study Portuguese, recipients should attach a certificate from the school where language studies were conducted. Following completion of studies in Brazil, BRASA strongly encourages recipients to participate in a subsequent BRASA congress in order to report on their activities.
Deadline for application: November 15, 2011.
Awards will be announced by February 1, 2012
To submit a proposal and for all other correspondence regarding this award, contact:
BRASA
223 International Studies Building
910 South Fifth Street
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Champaign, Illinois 61820
217-333-8248 (tel)
217-244-7333 (fax)
Email: brasa-illinois@illinois.edu
Brazil Initiations Scholarship (BIS) Recipients for 2010
Daniel O’Maley traveled to Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul in June and July to study Portuguese. He was also able to begin preliminary work studying the open-source/free software movement in Brazil, which has a large presence in the South. He is very interested in the relationship of the state, which promotes open-source software, and programmers in the movement who often see themselves as acting independently of large institutions. Dan attended the annual Forum International de Software Livre which was held at the PUC Rio Grande do Sul.
Serena Stein spent 5 months of medical anthropology fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela, Rocinha. She endeavored to better understand how the wider community understands tuberculosis as a disease, its symptoms, transmission mechanisms, therapy required, and the social repercussions in the lives of tuberculosis patients (ie, stigma and social isolation).
Arika Virapongse conducted exploratory fieldwork in the Barreirinhas region of Maranhão, Brazil over a one-month period in June and July. The main goal of this field study was to gain a better understanding of the scope and complexity of the role of buriti among communities, in order to focus research questions and hypotheses and research tools for collecting data. The objectives of this field period were to 1) select study communities, 2) conduct semi-structured interviews among different users of buriti regarding their livelihood strategies, decision-making and knowledge about buriti ecology, management and market, and 3) strengthen collaborative ties with Brazilian research affiliations.
Brazil Initiation Scholarship (BIS) Recipients for 2009
Yehonathan Broski, University of Texas, Department of History, doctoral student
The award enabled me to visit a variety of archives in Brazil and collect rare books, periodicals and manuscripts detailing Arab culture in that country. Specifically, the Instituto de Cultura Arabe, the Nucleo de Estudos Libaneses, and Nucleo de Estudos do Oriente Medio at the Fluminense University, along with Professor Safa Jubran's private library have provided me with documents that are only found in Brazil and that shed light on Levantine life in the early part of last century. Altogether, I have brought home more than 10 thousand pages of documents, which include rare newspapers, magazines, books, travel documents, manuscripts, and personal memoirs that are needless to say not available in the US. More specifically, these documents reveal that Levantines not only represented large literary communities in Brazil by the late 19th century--but that they formed an active and influential culture that continued to play into the affairs of the homeland. This diaspora cultivated and nurtured social Arab nationalist movements and birthed intellectual and political figures which would play significant roles in the then rising state of Lebanon.
I traveled to Florianopolis, Santa Catarina to begin my research on the sambaquis, or shell mounds, of Brazil. My research focused on collecting data pertaining to the species of mollusks used by the pre-ceramic peoples of the Brazilian coast to construct these extremely large funerary monuments and how certain species respond to changes in sea surface temperatures and salinity brought on by the Southern Oscillation, or El Niño and La Niña phases. If changes in the types of species collected occur in layers dated during El Niño or La Niña events, archaeologists may be able to better explain the collapse of this maritime society that spanned 5000 years and 2000 km
Amanda Hughes, University of Chicago, Department of History, doctoral student
I began the summer doing research in Rio de Janeiro at the Arquivo Nacional and the Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação de História Contemporânea (CPDOC) at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas. At the Arquivo Nacional I found a rich collection of the Instituto do Açúcar e do Álcool’s (I.A.A.) records including files on individual mills, credit lending, I.A.A. budgets and correspondence. With this collection, combined with the documents and interview transcripts at CPDOC, I will be able to complete my dissertation on the history of the I.A.A. The findings from this summer will serve as the basis for my dissertation proposal and bolster my applications for the Fulbright and Social Science Research Council fellowships. The B.I.S. has allowed me to position myself as a top candidate for these grants as I can specify what sources I will use, where they are located, and which institutions and individuals in Brazil are willing to offer me guidance during my stay there.
Hasan Shahid, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Latin American Studies, M.A. student
Before traveling to Brazil this summer, I had originally planned to focus on studying the role of mosques in