Publications

The New Zealand Centre for Latin American Studies (NZCLAS) has published the first book in its new annual monograph series Auckland Latin American Studies (ALAS 1), which is titled Reconfiguring Brazil: Interdisciplinary Essays (2012), and edited by Roberto J González-Casanovas. Please see the information below about the book. A secure PDF copy of the book can be downloaded, which allows reading and printing, but not copying or editing the contents.

Full bibliographic entry:
González-Casanovas, Roberto J., ed. Reconfiguring Brazil: Interdisciplinary Essays. Auckland Latin American Studies (ALAS) monograph series 1. Auckland: New Zealand Centre for Latin American Studies (NZCLAS), 2012. iv+112p. Book: ISBN 9780473233822 (print), ISBN 9780473233846 (PDF), ISBN 9780473233839 (ebook). ALAS series: ISSN 2324-2590 (print), ISSN 2324-2604 (digital).

Keywords:
Brazil, colonial Brazil, Brazilian history, Brazilian literature, Brazilian art history, Brazilian cinema, Brazilian architecture

Description:
This first volume in the Auckland Latin American Studies (ALAS) monograph series consists of eight interdisciplinary essays on Brazil that cover cross-cultural approaches on topics in colonial history, art history, comparative literature, contemporary film, and modern architecture by specialist scholars from Brazil, New Zealand, and Australia. The authors and topics include:

• Roberto González-Casanovas on the rise and fall of religious tolerance of Jews and New Christians in Portuguese and Dutch colonial Brazil.
  
  
• Diane Brand on cultural politics of royal spectacle by land and sea of the Portuguese court in Lisbon and then in exile in Rio de Janeiro.
  
  
• Genaro Oliveira on revisions of official national history in texts and paintings that construct independent Brazil’s Empire and Republic.
  
  
• Marcelo Mendes de Souza on comparisons of levels of reception of English literature by Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis and Argentine writer J.L. Borges.
  
  
• Aline Frey on the film City of God’s realist techniques in portraying favela insiders.
  
  
• Sarah McDonald on cultures of violence and corrupt authorities in the films Tropa de Elite 1 and 2.
  
  
• Rosangela Tenorio on bioclimatic regionalism in a comparative study of four architects from Brazil, Mexico, and India who design sustainable cities.
  
  
• Roberto Segre’s wide-ranging assessment, in the year of Oscar Niemeyer’s death, of the trajectory and legacy of Brazil’s premier architect.

Tales of Land and Sea

Tales of Land and Sea, co-edited by the Centre Director and a former head of its research programmes, Ricardo Cicerchia, brings together a series of reflections originally offered by scholars from New Zealand, Latin America and Europe at an interdisciplinary conference the Centre hosted in 2003. Its seven articles reconstruct and deconstruct travel accounts as discourses of cultural practices, with reference to voyages relating to Latin America, the Pacific, or the imagination. Particular attention is given to travellers and itineraries in the understanding of their texts or to an aesthetic dimension that develops a genealogy of travel accounts still open to debate and ethnographic reflection'. (Copies of this book will be available on request from the Centre).

Journal for Iberian and Latin American Studies

This Special Edition of Australasia's refereed Journal for Iberian and Latin American Studies was edited by Professor Cicerchia and Dr Lehman, based on papers presented at the Centre's second conference (also in 2003) on the Argentine Crisis. It includes contributions from scholars in Latin America and the Centre, organised around two themes: 'Structural Reform, Public Policy and Political Economy'; and 'The Reconstruction of Civil Society: Memory, Representation and Social Change'.

Mexico and New Zealand

Mexico and New Zealand summarises the presentations made in this seminar, the Centre's first public event. The seminar sought to stimulate a dialogue between scholars and officials in the two nations on selected political, economic and cultural themes of interest to both societies. Its reflections on Mexico were led by Ambassador Miguel Marín Bosch and Dr. Carlos Elizondo; and the New Zealand response featured contributions from Professors James Belich, Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Jane Kelsey and Associate Professor Robert Scollay.' (Copies of this book are also available on request from the Centre).