Today, November 4th, the Minas Mundo Princeton University Seminar resumed its activities with a series of panel discussions.
The session titled “Past Times and Imagination” kicked off the second day’s presentations, featuring Miqueias Mügge (Princeton), Roniere Menezes (CEFET-MG), Isadora Mota (Princeton), and Luís Felipe Hirano (UFG). Topics discussed included Brazil’s diplomatic representation abroad during the First Reign of the Brazilian Empire and in the writings of Cecília Meireles for the Travel in Brazil magazine during the United States’ “Good Neighbor Policy,” as well as abolitionist uprisings in Serro and Diamantina and the relationship between Baroque and modernity in Joaquim Pedro de Andrade’s cinema.
The next session, called “Nature, Archives, Politics,” included presentations by Arbel Griner (Princeton), Lorena Fleury (UFRGS), Reinaldo Marques (UFMG), and Fábio Zuker (Princeton). This session delved into a range of cosmopolitical issues, such as the impact of neuroscience on the concept of ‘humanity’ and the gathering of Latin American far-right groups in Florida. Additionally, the discourse covered the cosmopolitanism present in the archive of writer Autran Dourado, highlighting contrasts between colonial, post-colonial, and modern Minas Gerais, as well as links between the Anthropocene and mining-related disasters in the region.
In the ensuing session, “Region, Poetry, Music, and Promise,” Lucas Prates (Princeton), Rennan Pimentel (PPGSA/UFRJ), Rodrigo Simon (Princeton), and Luís Augusto Fischer (Princeton) gave presentations. Early discussions on regionalism examined the unlikely cosmopolitanism in the Brazilian Midwest, in the context of its agro-industrial development, and the social education of citizenship and democracy in the Northeast region. Moreover, the notion of cosmopolitanism was explored through letters written to President Lula before he took office and in an analysis of time and place in the songs of Clube da Esquina.
The fourth session of the day, “Displacement, Gender, Narration,” featured Lilia Schwarcz (USP), Rita Lages Rodrigues (UFMG), Dylan Blau Edelstein (Princeton), and Tiago Ferro (Princeton). The discussions focused on women artists and ranged from framing the work of Teresinha Soares and her audacious feminist themes to the interplay between local and global networks of women artists either in or from Minas. Also debated were the critical reception of Maura Lopes Cançado’s diary, Hospício é Deus [Hospice Is God] (1965), written while she was institutionalized, and the resurgence of local-global dialectics in post-modern times, exemplified in the work of Annie Ernaux.
The seminar wrapped up with a lecture titled “Cosmopolitanism and its Discontents” by Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones (Princeton), moderated by André Botelho (UFRJ). The lecture was livestreamed on the Minas Mundo channel and can be accessed via this link.
Here are some highlights of the day:
This post was contributed by João Mello and photos sent in by the participants.
