Hobart
& William Smith & Union Colleges
Study
Term in Brazil
Fall
2001
Travel & Identity
(The Sociology of Travel & Travel Writing:
Challenging Identities)
Malcolm
Willison
This course considers the intersection of racial,
ethnic, class, occupational, gender, age, and national and personal identities
and roles in the interactions of traveler and inhabitants within the social
structure and cultures of Brazil and some of its regions. It therefore also
explores various ordinary Brazilians', foreign and Brazilian writers', other
observers', and the students' own constructions of self-identity and social
identity. As these vary according to social, geographic, and temporal place,
with their local and larger loyalties and conflicts within and among identities,
and their (often tentative) resolutions, in the students' experience of Brazil.
The course will begin as part of the students'
educational program in Sao Paulo, as they read and hear about the social
structure and cultures of Brazil and of the other regions they will visit on the
subsequent study tour. They will
start by keeping a day book of their experiences while living in Sao Paulo and
traveling briefly into the hinterlands and to Rio from there. From this reading
and from their own experience and field work research in Sao Paulo the students
will write several brief papers while still in Sao Paulo, soon to be the world's
second largest city. This stage of the course will also be preparation for a
three-week Study Tour to four of Brazilian cities and their regions--Ouro Preto,
an 18th-century mining town in Minas Gerais, Manaus and the Rio Negro in the
Amazon, Recife, capital of the poverty-stricken Northeast and third-largest city
in Brazil, and Salvador, the blackest city in Brazil.
Besides reading on identity, on travel as an
intervening variable in helping determine self-identification, and on claims for
a "Brazilian national identity," they will see, as part of their
preparation for their Study Tour to these four other cities, among other
materials, the Rio, Ouro Preto, and Amazon poems and letters of Elizabeth Bishop
and excerpts from The Diary of 'Helena
Morley,' her translation of the autobiography of a young turn-of-the-20th-century
girl in Minas Gerais; excerpts from the travels of two famous naturalists,
Charles Darwin to the Brazilian coastal cities and Alfred Russel Wallace in
Amazonia in the early-mid-19th century, anthropological studies of
local experience with the supernatural, and a contemporary Indian community's
history; Joao Cabral de Melo Neto's poems on Recife and Pernambuco,
excerpts from his The Death & Life
of a Severino, and a poem-narrative from the indigenous Northeastern cordels;
and one of Jorge Amado's Salvador novels, The
War of the Saints. They will also hear lectures and watch Brazilian films
(including--as available--"Chica da Silva"; "Macunaima" and
"Bye-Bye Brazil"; "Tieta do Agreste"; and "Quilombo"
and "Dona Flor & Her Two Hus-bands").
Based on their preliminary reading, lectures, films,
and Sao Paulo experience, their field work and fieldwork reports, day book, and
any appropriate personal diary or journal entries and letters, as well as their
prior papers (including those for the other two courses), the students will each
be expected to develop their own research proposal about their expectations and
plans for formulating what are to be looked for, observed, and experienced in
terms of identities as these emerge in the upcoming Study Tour--as travelers and
locals, students and workers, young and older, privileged and marginal, women
and men, foreigners and citizens, North Americans and Brazilians.
On the subsequent Study Tour, using their daily travel journal entries
about and exposure to residents and their lives, in these regions, keeping in
mind their reading in Sao Paulo about the places to be visited, each student
will write three essays. The first
on one of the first three cities visited on the Study Tour, and the second on
Salvador, the last city. Both papers will be based on the student's response to
each city as well as their earlier reading and experience. By the end of the
Study Tour, each student will also have written a brief concluding paper tying
the themes of all their Sao Paulo and Study Tour essays together, including some
consideration of how the student's own identities have emerged and changed.
In addition, each student will give an oral presentation on the assigned
city to the faculty and other students. If
there is time, these students will also do a panel presentation on Salvador for
the others on the Study Tour.
DAY
BOOK (Sao Paulo)/TRAVEL
JOURNAL (Study Tour) FORMAT
Page One: Experience (adapted from wysiwyg://127/http://journals.about.com/blsnapshot.htm)
Make
additional copies of these pages to use each day, after putting your name on
them.
Try
to fill in all items on both pages. Add
any relevant categories. Use extra
pages for additional
Turn
in your new pages (except personal diary entries and letters) at each meeting
with the instructor. If you need them for work
you are doing (e.g., field work), make photocopies of your
Today's
date and day of the week
/ /01,
. Season and weather:
 |
What's
blooming and what else I smelled: |
|
What I wore, and why: |
|
Where I spent a lot of the day, and what transpired: |
|
Other places I went, and events there: |
|
How I got to these places & what happened on the way: |
|
What I ate & drank, how they tasted, with whom, and where: |
|
What I bought, from whom, and how: |
|
Whom I talked to, about what, and how that went: |
|
Whom I communicated with by mail, email, fax, etc., and what I learned: |
|
What was interesting in conversations, incl. tel., & by radio, TV,
newspapers, etc.: |
|
What else I saw that was interesting at home, around town, at school: |
|
What I learned today: |
|
What I accomplished: |
|
What I wished for: |
|
What I've planned ahead for: |
|
What I'm looking forward to: |
|
What I most and least enjoyed: |
|
What I remembered from the past: |
|
What's
interesting from a previous day I didn't put down then: |
Page
Two: Identities
DAY
BOOK / TRAVEL JOURNAL (cont.)
-
Today, with respect to my own and others' identities I was surprised at…
-
Today I noticed that what Brazilians I know, people on the bus, in the street, etc. did and said to each other or to me identified them or me as…
-
An event today that showed me that (not) all Brazilians are treated as citizens was…
-
I noticed (an)other foreigner(s) being identified by…
-
Today I really felt like a Norteamericana because…
-
I was reminded today of my ethnic / racial / class / gender / etc., identity by…
-
Today my Brazilian family / classmates / teacher(s) / contacts / acquaintances / strangers made me feel my self-conception was…
-
Hearing today from my own family of origin / relatives / U.S. friends affected my notion of myself as…
-
By being identified as a young person, I found today that…
-
Identifying myself as a student today was a/n dis / advantage, since…
-
Today I realized that I identified myself with…
-
Here's some evidence that I may be developing a 'Brazilian' personality:
-
Other experiences today related to my own and others' identities:
-
Questions raised today about my own and/or others' identities:
SYLLABUS
(b)
Day Book/Travel Journal submissions:
10%;
(c)
papers submitted in Sao Paulo: 30%
(three at 10% @);
(d)
papers submitted on Study Tour: 30%
(three at 10% @);
(e)
panel participation on Salvador: 10% (if no panel presentation, its
weight prorated among the other;
(f) presentation of paper on selected Study Tour city: 10% (20% if no panel is presented on Salvador).
Schedule of
Assignments:
I.
First
Stage: in Sao Paulo
Sept. 17:
lst meeting: Travel and its effect on identity
Discuss:
Course topic and syllabus, and Day Book.
For Sept. 19: Start observations and entries for Day Book on Sao Paulo
experiences
(incl. material from previous--first--week in Brazil);
Read:
(1a,b) Charles Darwin, letter extracts, Bahia, 1 March and Rio, 2-6 March
1832,
Correspondence
of Charles Darwin, v. 1 [1985] (handouts);
(2a,b) Elizabeth Bishop,
"Arrival at Santos" (1952 [1965]) and "Questions of
Travel"
(1965),
The Complete Poems (1983) (handout);
(3) Bishop, letter extract,
Petropolis, Dec. 1951, One Art (1994) (handout);
(4) David Weimer excerpt, Remembering
Elizabeth Bishop: An Oral
Biography, Gary
Fountain & Peter Brazeau, eds. (l994) (handout);
(5) Giovanni
Delli Zotti,"Tourism," Encycl.
of Soc.,2nd ed. (2000)
(handout).
For Oct.22: Start reading Jorge Amado,The
War of the Saints (1988)[l993] (purchased).
Sept. 19:
2nd meeting: Whom of us do we take with us on our travels?
Submit
Day Book.
Discuss:
Day Book and reading on travel.
For Sept.24: Write: lst short paper (2-4 pages min.) on "Who Do I
Think I Am?"
(initial identity in Brazil).
Read:
(6a,b,c) Darwin on Rio, April, May, June/July,1832, Beagle
Diary [1988] (handout);
(7) Margo Jefferson,
"We Are All Tourists," (NY Times Book Review, 7/8/01)(handout)
(8a,b,c) Eliz. Bishop,
"Squatter's Children" (1965), "Going to the Bakery (1969),
and trans. of Anonymous, "Four Sambas," Complete
Poems (1983)
(handouts);
(9) Stefan Hormuth, "An
Ecological Perspective on the Self-Concept," The
Relational
Self,
Rebecca Curtis, ed. (1991), pp.94-96, 98-99
(handout).
Sept. 24:
3rd meeting: What "identity"?
What kinds of "identity"
are there?
Submit
Day Book and paper.
Present
and discuss: student papers in the
light of the reading.
For Sept. 26: Read:
(10) Livia Neves de H.
Barbosa,"The Brazilian Jeitinho: An
Exercise in National
Identity" (1992), The
Brazilian Puzzle, David Hess and Roberto Da Matta, eds.
(1995) (handout);
(11) Kay Deaux, "Social Identities:
Thoughts on Structure & Change," Relational
Self.
(1991) (handout).
Sept.26:
4th meeting: Do foreigners experience the "Brazilian national
identity"?
Submit
Day Book.
Discuss:
"The Brazilian Jeitinho" and other Brazilian identities
For Oct. 1: Read:
(12)
[Sra.
Augusto Mario Caldeira Brant], excerpts from The Diary of 'Helena
Morley'
(1893-95)
[1957], trans. Eliz. Bishop (handout);
(13)
Bishop,
"The Book & Its Author," intro to Diary of 'Helena Morley' (handout);
(14) Carlos Drummond de
Andrade, "Infancy" and "The Table," trans. Eliz.
Bishop,
Complete Poems (handout).
Sept.
27, 5-7 pm: See film, if available,
"Xica da Silva" (dir. Carlos Diegues) (slave's
18th-century
experience in Diamantina, Minas Gerais).
Oct. 1: 5th
meeting:Brazilian
past national, racial, class, ethnic, gender, and age identities
Submit
Day Book.
Discuss
reading: Diary of Helena Morley and
Carlos Drummond de Andrade's poems.
For Oct. 3: Read:
(15) Bishop, letter
extracts, Ouro Preto, 1961, l965, 1966, One
Art (handout);
(16a,b) Bishop, "Under
the Window: Ouro Preto" (1969) and "Manuelzinho"
(1965),
Complete Poems (handout);
(17) Bishop, "To the
Botequim & Back"(1970),The
Collected Prose (1984)(handout).
Oct. 3:
6th meeting: Brazilian identities of the present, and a visitor's response
Submit
Day Book.
Discuss
reading: Eliz. Bishop's poems,
essay, and letters on Ouro Preto..
For Oct. 8: Write: 2nd
paper on "Observing Social
Differences and Identifying
'Identity'"
Read:
(18) Alfred Russel Wallace, excerpts,
A
Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio
Negro, with an Account of Native Tribes…(2nded.,1889(1853)
[1969] (handout).
Oct. 4, 5-7 pm:
See film, if available, "Macunaima" (on Amazon Indians).
Oct. 8:
7th meeting: Assigned and accepted identities between traveler and locals
Submit
Day Book and paper.
Present and discuss student papers on Observing Social Differences and
Identity, in
`
the light of reading so far, including Travels
on the Amazon.
For Oct. 10: Read:
(19) Sia Kaxinawa, "The History of the Huni Kui
People"(contemporary conditions,
state of Acre, upper Amazon)
([1999]) (handout);
(20a,b) Bishop,"Santarem"(l978}&"The Riverman"([1969]),Complete
Poems (hndt);
(21)
Bishop,
letter extract on Amazon, etc., One Art (handout).
Oct.
10: 8th meeting:
Migrations and mobilized identities
Submit
Day Book.
Discuss
reading on people of the Amazon.
For Oct. 15: Read:
(22) Charles Wagley,
excerpts from Amazon Town (1953)
on shamans and the
dolphin (handout);
(23) Candace Slater,
"Invitation to the Dance" (intro.) and ch. 8, "The Dolphin as
White Man," Dance of the
Dolphin: Transformation &
Disenchantment in the
Amazonian Imagination (1994) (handout). - 3 -
Oct.
11, 5-7 pm: See, as available,
"Bye-Bye Brazil" (Carlos Diegues, dir.) (travelling
troupe
in Amazonia).
Oct. 15: 9th
meeting:
Complex identities from cultural interactions
Submit Day Book.
Discuss reading on alternative identities through shamanism and dolphins
For Oct. 17: Read:
(24)
Darwin,
on Pernambuco (Recife), Aug. 1836, Beagle
Diary (handout);
(25)
Joao
Cabral de Melo Neto, "Paisagem do
Capibaribe," "Cemiterio
Pernambucano (Nossa Senhora da Luz)," A cana dos otros,"
"O urubu
mobilizado," "O sertanejo falando," "Sobre
Elizabeth Bishop," Selected
Poetry, 1937-1990 (1994)
(handout);
(26)
Cabral,
Cantos I, II, XIV, The Death & Life of
a Severino: A
Pernambuo Christmas Play (1954-55)
(trans. Eliz. Bishop, l983) (handout);
(27) Jose
de Souza Campos, O Rei a Pomba e O Gaviao
(The King, the Dove,
and
the Sparrowhawk)" (1978), trans. and ed. Candace Slater,
Stories on a
String, The Brazilian Literatura
de Cordel (1982) (folhetos) (handout),
with
Slater, "The Poet," intro. (handodut).
Oct.
16, 5-7 pm: See, when available,
"Tieta do Agreste" (Carlos Diegues, dir.) (rich Sao
Paulo
woman returns to poverty-stricken Nordeste home town).
Oct. 17:
10th meeting: Class and citizen identities and interactions, old and new
Submit Day Book.
Discuss reading: poems of Melo Neto, his Death
& Life of a Severino, and the folheto.
For Oct. 22: Write 3rd paper:
"Now Who Do I Think I
Am?"
Read:
(28) Juliano Spyer,
"Urban Indians," The Brazil Reader, Robert Levine & John
Crocitti, eds. (1999) (Rio Sao Francisco Indians in Sao Paulo);
(29a,b) Darwin, on Bahia, Feb.-March 1832, August 1836, Beagle
Diary (hndout);
(30)
"Jorge Amado dies at 88…," NY
Times, 8/7/01 (handout);
(31a,b) "Cuban Exile Group Shattered…" and "Heir to a
Cuban Exile Leader…,"
NY Times 8/8/01 and 9/2/01 (handoutsj).
.
Oct.
18, 5-7 pm: See, when available, "Quilombo" (Carlos Diegues, dir.)
(independent
Black
17th -century self-governing settlement in the Brazilian Outback).
Oct. 22:
11th meeting: Travel, migration, exile, and changing identities
Submit Day Book and paper.
Present and discuss student identity papers, in the light of reading so
far.
For Oct. 24: Finish
(32)
Jorge Amado, The War of the Saints (purchased).
Oct.
23, 5-7 pm: See, when available,
"Dona Flor & Her Two Husbands" (Bruno
Barreto, dir.) (based on
Jorge Amado's novel).
Oct. 24:
12th meeting: The clash of identities
Submit Day Book.
Discuss The
War of the Saints and Jorge Amado.
Decide
which of the first three Study Tour locations each student prefers to write on.
For Oct. 29: Prepare research proposal (see "Guidelines") for
recording your experi-
ence, observations, and impressions in the four regions to be visited on
the Study
Tour, including maps of your vision of and your placement in the chosen
location of
the first three, and in (4) Bahia (do not consult
atlases, but you may talk to people).
Oct. 29: 13th
meeting:
Locating the traveler
Submit Day Book, research proposals, and maps.
Discuss student proposals and maps.
Hob.&Wm Smith Study Term in Brazil, Fall 2001, Soc.146: Travel & Identity, Willison
For Oct. 31: Submit
proposal.
Read:
(33)
Darwin, letter extract, Bahia, 4 Aug. 1836, Correspondence
(handout);
(34)
Bishop, letter extracts, l968, One
Art (handout);
(35)
Bishop, "Pink Dog," Complete
Poems (handout);
(36)
David Hess, "The
Distorted Mirror: Brazil & the United States,"
Brazilian Puzzle, Hess &
DaMatta (handout).
Oct. 31: 14th
meeting:
Preparing one's identities for travel
Submit Day Book
Discuss reading, and
Study Tour proposals and maps for revision.
Guidelines for Study Tour Research Proposal
Each student will develop a research proposal on her
expectations and plans for what are to be looked for, observed, and experienced
in terms of identities as these emerge on the Study Tour.
The student needs to consider in advance at least
some of the identity questions that will arise from her interaction with those
she meets and/or sees--as traveler and locals, student and workers, young and
older, privileged and marginal, women and men, foreigner and citizens, North
American and Brazilians. To
do so, she will have also to figure out the inhabitants' own views of their own
and of others' identities. In
addition, the student should also find interesting her identity interactions
with the other North Americans on the Study Tour.
Since the student will not know in advance exactly
whom she will meet and/or observe or hear about on the Study Tour, she needs to
work out some preliminary ideas about what she will be looking for from
observations and conversations on the Study Tour, in terms of physical and
verbal behaviors. Her experiences
in Sao Paulo should provide some suggestions about what to expect and what to
look for.
In addition, each student should draw a rough map
indicating her initial placement in her sense of the layout of what's socially
important in her chosen locale and in Salvador on the Study Tour, as a guide to
her expectations for her preliminary personal relationship to each of these
social environments. (It is not
expected that the maps will be geographically accurate but rather personally
useful and significant, particularly as they indicate her preliminary
expectations for where she be and what she will experience.)
Write up your preliminary proposal and maps for
consideration on October 29 and 31 by
the
others in the course.
II.
Second Stage: On the study tour
A.
Utilizing the preliminary reading, lectures, discussion, and papers,
their own day book, fieldwork research, and other courses and experience in Sao
Paulo, as well as their research proposal and daily travel journal entries on
the Study Tour about their exposure to residents visited on the Tour, their
lives, and their identities, and drawing also as appropriate on the student's
own private diary and/or letters, each student in this course will write an
essay (presumably in long hand, since it's unlikely for PCs to be available) on
a particular locale, to be chosen in advance, from among the first three visited
on the study tour. The report will
include a revised map of the student's conception of that place.
The students will have agreed among themselves and with the instructor as
to which one of the first three Study Tour sites each will write about.
In addition, each
student may give an oral presentation on the assigned locale to the
Study Tour faculty and its other students.
B.
The second Study Tour essay and map to be completed by all students in
this course will be on the last city visited on the Study Tour--Salvador, the
largest black city in Brazil (with one of the largest black urban populations in
the world). If there is time, these
students will also give a panel presentation on Salvador for the others on the
Study Tour.
C.
By the end of the Study Tour, each student in this course will also have
written a brief Conclusion that ties the themes of her essays together,
including some considerations on how the student's own identities have emerged
or changed.
Nov. 4 - 7: Ouro
Preto, an 18th-century mining town in Minas Gerais,
For
Nov. 5: Start Study Tour Journal to
continue daily throughout Study
Tour.
Review Ouro Preto materials.
Nov. 5:
15th meeting
Submit
Journal.
Discuss
observations in the light of prior reading.
For Nov. 7: Assigned
student: Write "Observation
& Analysis of Identities in
Ouro
Preto" and revise personal map of Ouro Preto.
Nov. 7:
16th meeting
Assigned
student: Present paper and
map on Ouro Preto for discussion in the
light of observations and reading.
For
Nov. 9: Review materials on
Amazonia.
Nov. 8 - 14: Manaus
and the Rio Negro
Nov.
9: 17th meeting
Submit
Journal.
Discuss
observations in the light of prior reading.
For
Nov. 12: Assigned student: Write "Observations of Identity in the Amazon,"
and revise
personal map of the Amazon.
Nov. 12:
18th meeting
Submit
Journal.
Assigned student:
Present paper and map on Amazon for discussion in the light
of
observations and reading.
For Nov. 16: Review
materials on the Northeast.
Nov. 14 - 18: Recife and
Pernambuco in the poverty-stricken Northeast
Nov. 16:
19th meeting
Submit
Journal.
Assigned student:
Present paper and map on Amazon for discussion in the light
For Nov. 19: Assigned student: Write "Identity Observations in the
Northeast of
Nov.
19: 20th meeting
Submit
Journal.
Assigned student:
Present paper on Northeast for discussion in the light of
observations
and reading.
For Nov. 21: All students
write "Travel and Identity in Salvador da Bahia" and
revise
personal map of Salvador.
Nov.
21: 21st meeting
Submit
Journal.
Present
1st draft of papers on Salvador
For
Nov. 23: Revise draft of Salvador papers for presentation to rest of students.
Write Conclusion to
the Sao Paulo and Study Tour travel and
Nov. 23:
22nd meeting
Submit
revised Salvador papers and the final Conclusion to the travel and identity
Present Salvador papers to the rest of students and faculty.