Presentations Schedule: Group 1
Please sign up to give ONE presentation during the course.
Aim for no more than one presentation per week. You can do a joint
presentation with a friend if you want.
Week 1: Introduction
 What do you already know about Brazil and its history? What makes it similar/
different from other countries in the Americas? Why study Brazilian history?
 What did Brazilian colonial society look like by about 1750? How was it structured
economically, socially, politically?
 Seminar Reading: Skidmore, Brazil, Introduction and Chapter 1; Robert Levine,
“How Brazil Works” in Levine and Crocitti, eds., The Brazil Reader, pp. 402-7;
Abdias do Nascimento, “The Myth of Racial Democracy,” in The Brazil Reader, pp.
379-81
Week 2: Late Colonial Reforms and Tensions
Bethell, Colonial Brazil, chapters 6 & 7; Stuart B Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation
of Brazilian Society: Bahia 1550-1835 (1985), Chapter 9: “A Colonial Slave Society”
 Was Brazil ripe for independence by the early nineteenth century?
 How had the relationship between metropolis and colony evolved? Do you see
similarities/ differences with the rest of the Iberian Americas?
 What factors contributed to stability / instability?
[No presenters this week]
Week 3: Independence and aftermath
 Why did Brazil become independent in 1822?
 Which groups contributed?
 Did the independence process look different from different regions of the country
or from the “top down” versus the “bottom up”? Why/ how?
 How much changed after 1822?
Presenter(s):
Week 4: An Experiment in Decentralisation
 Who or what lay behind the regional revolts of the 1830s and 1840s?
 Why did Brazil remain one united nation?
Presenter(s):
Week 5: The “Regresso”
 What brought renewed stability, and by when?
 Who were the winners and losers?
 How democratic was the Brazilian Empire?
Presenter(s):
Week 7: Trouble in the Empire: Politics and the Paraguayan War
 What were the effects of the Paraguayan War on Brazilian politics and society?
Presenter(s): George Bainbridge
Week 8: The Abolition of Slavery and Post-Emancipation Realities
 Why was slavery abolished so late in Brazil?
 Who or what ended it?
 How much changed with abolition?
Presenter(s): Jasmine Jones
Week 10: The Advent of the Republic
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Why did Brazil become a republic in 1889?
What role did positivism play?
What about the military?
Was it a contested process?
Presenter(s):
Term 2
Week 1: Coffee with Milk: The Structures of the Republic
 How much changed under the Republic?
 Who were the winners /losers?
 What was the role of coffee economically, politically?
Presenter(s):
Week Two: The Breakdown of the Old Order: the 1920s and the 1930
Revolution
 How did Brazil look different demographically, politically, and culturally by 1930?
 Why did Vargas come to power in 1930?
 Was the collapse of the Republic inevitable?
Presenter(s): Sarah Bird
Week Three: “Father of the Poor”? Vargas and the Estado Novo
 Did Vargas deserve the title “Father of the Poor”?
 What were Vargas’ legacies for Brazilian politics?
Presenter(s):
Week Four: National Identity: Samba, Football, and “Racial Democracy”
 In what ways did Brazilian national identity develop from about the 1930s?
 Was it a top-down or a bottom-up process?
Presenter(s): Eve Stanger
Week Five: Migration, Urbanisation and Labour Movements
 How successful were the demands of Brazilian organised labour in the middle
years of the twentieth century?
 How did those demands interact with the state?
Presenter(s): Linda Edgcumbe
Week Six: Reading Week
Week Seven: “Fifty Years’ Progress in Five”? Kubitschek, Brasília and inflation:
 Did Juschelino Kubitschek really achieve “fifty years’ progress in five”?
Presenter(s):
Week Eight: The Military in Power
 Why did the military take power?
 Who lost/ gained?
 Is “economic miracle” an appropriate way to describe the military’s economic
record?
 Was there an alternative to military rule in 1964?
Presenter(s): Larry Bowen; Eliot Heath-Griffiths [joint?]
Week Nine: The Transition to Democracy; Neoliberalism; New Social
Movements (1): Liberation Theology
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Why did Brazil move back to democracy by 1985?
Who drove the process of “opening”?
What was the role of the Church and Liberation Theology?
Did democracy bring gains for ordinary Brazilians? How much really changed?
Presenter(s):
Week Ten: New Social Movements (2): Black Movement; Indigenous issues;
Land
 What were the contributions to re-democratisation, and what were the claims, of
the Black Movement; the indigenous; and the landless workers’ movement?
 How far have their struggles been realised?
Presenter(s):
Term 3:
Week One: Debt, inflation, and the election of the PT: a new era?
 Did the election of Lula and the PT represent a new departure for Brazilian
politics and national life?
 How has Brazil’s international profile shifted in the last 20 years or so? Is this
significant?
Presenter(s):
Week Two: Conclusions: Brazil: “Um País de Todos” (“A Country for All”)?
 Is the slogan “A Country for All” anything more than empty rhetoric?
 Are the challenges faced by Brazilians and their governments in 2014 new or old?
Presenter(s):
Week Three: Revision
Presenter(s):