PORT 1451 - SENSORY EXPLORATIONS OF THE LUSOSPHERE

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
What could be gained by a focus on the sensorial? What meanings are revealed through the honing in on the banal processes of our everyday lives? How are these often overlooked details connected to larger social phenomena and structures? How can the literary representation of individual food choice provide clues to the racial and migratory politics of late nineteenth-century Brazil? Through a critical examination of literary texts, art, performances, and films from Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau that center on the senses and the sensorial, this course explores the woven logics of sensorial representation and cultural narratives of race, gender, class, politics, and nation in the Lusophone world. Aided by accompanying theoretical readings as well as individual research, students are expected to critically discuss both in the classroom with their peers and through formal writing assignments the connections between sensorial representations and cultural narratives related to nation building, (neo)coloniality, post-revolutionary disillusionment, historical reverberations in the contemporary present, among others, within the Lusosphere. Key concepts and issues: cultural cannibalism, the sensorial, (nation)alism, semiotics of food, aurality, affect, synestheticism, (post)colonialism, neocoloniality, gendered constructions of nation, and racial indigestion. Lectures and discussion will be in English. Course materials will be made available to students in English; however, students may choose to submit written work in English, Portuguese, and/or Spanish. This course is aimed at advanced undergraduate students.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis

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