The Amazon: From Cannibals to Rainforest Crunch
***Preliminary Syllabus***
Instructor:
Sarah Sarzynski
Course Description
From the time of the conquest, the outside world turned the Amazon into an imagined
place to unleash their fantasies and fears. Narratives have described the Amazon’s lost
cities sprinkled in gold, prehistoric beasts and savage Indians. Certain stories construct the
Amazon as a place where medicines and cures for modern ailments remain to be
discovered, or where adventures abound with giant snakes, cannibals and man-eating fish.
In other narratives, the forest is ravished by capitalist exploitation and devastation, which
destroys the innocent paradise of Eden. This course introduces students to the gendered
and racialized narratives of the Amazon focusing on how such narratives have been
imagined in visual and popular culture. We examine images (wood carvings and
photography), explorers’ accounts, ethnographies, novels, and film from the time of the
conquest to the present day. The point is to understand how the Amazon and its people
have been imagined externally and internally, and why certain narratives hold power in the
western world.
Readings
Required:
Candace Slater, Entangled Edens: Visions of the Amazon
ISBN: 0520226410
Patrick Tierney, Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the
Amazon
ISBN: 0393049221
Luis Sepúlveda, The Old Man Who Read Love Stories
ISBN: 0151685509
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Course Requirements
Course requirements include reading/film responses, four short assignments, and a final
comprehensive project. Assignments vary in length and style (individual and group, oral
and written) but all focus on the central issue of the course, which is to analyze visual and
popular narratives of the Amazon and its people. The course asks epistemological (why and
how we know what we know) questions about the power of such narratives while also
questioning if it is possible to challenge such imagined narratives in visual media. Readings
and film screenings are mandatory. Attendance and class participation is graded.
Course Schedule
Section I: Imagining the Amazon, Colonial Encounters
Thursday, Jan 28th
Introduction
**Film: (1) (due Tuesday, Feb. 2nd)
The Amazon I-MAX
Tuesday, Feb 2nd
Lecture: Pre-Columbian Amazonia
Discussion of film and readings
Readings:
Candace Slater, Entangled Edens, Introduction, pp.1-22, 81-94.
Charles Mann, 1491, pp. 280-311
***Start map project***
2
Thurs., Feb 4th
Colonial Encounters, Wood Carvings
**Readings: (2)
Darlene Sadlier, Brazil Imagined: 1500 to the Present, “Edenic and Cannibal Encounters,”
pp. 9-61
José Toribio Medina, The Discovery of the Amazon According to the Account of Friar Gaspar
de Carvajal and Other Documents, pp. 212-224.
Tues., Feb 9th
El Dorado
Readings:
Candace Slater, Entangled Edens, pp. 25-75
Brad Prager, The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth, pp.26-35
**Film: (3)
Werner Hertzog, Aguirre: Wrath of God
Section II: Rubber, Science, and Adventure in the Green Hell
Thurs., Feb 11th
Short Assignment #1 Due (Map of Amazonia)
Rubber Boom
Readings:
Barbara Weinstein, “Tappers and Traders,” The Amazon Rubber Boom, 1850-1920, pp. 5-34.
3
Tues., Feb. 16th
Science, Nature and Adventures at the turn of the century
**Readings: (4)
Nancy Leys Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature, pp.57-119.
Theodore Roosevelt, “The River of Doubt,” pp. 41-54.
Thurs., Feb 18th
Photography, Film and the Amazon
Readings:
Stephen Nugent, Scoping the Amazon, pp.72-89
Márcio Souza, Silvino Santos: O cineasta do ciclo da borracha, pp. 90-96; 164-220
Tues., Feb. 23rd
Fordlândia
Start Film in class: O cineasta da selva (The Filmmaker of the Jungle)
Readings:
Joe Jackson, The Thief at the End of the World, pp. 291-303
Thurs., Feb 25th
Short Assignment #2 Due (National Geographic)
Film in class: O cineasta da selva (The Filmmaker of the Jungle)
Section III: Indigenous Peoples
Tues., March 2nd
The Return of Cannibalism
Readings:
Oswald de Andrade, “Cannibal Manifesto”
Beth Conklin, “Representations of Cannibalism on the Amazonian Frontier,”
Anthropological Quarterly 70, 2 (1997): 68-78.
4
Thurs., March 4th
Tristes Tropiques
Readings:
Claude-Levi Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, pp. 281-293; 305-317
**Film: (5)
Keep the River on the Right
Tues., March 9th
Yanomami
In-class Film: Contact: The Yanomami Indians of Brazil
**Readings: (6)
Patrick Tierney, Darkness in El Dorado, pp. xxi-122; 317-326
Thurs., March 11th
Yanomami
Readings:
Robert Borofsky, Yanomami: The Fierce Controversy and What We Can Learn From It, TBA
**Film: (7)
Yanomami: Keepers of the Flame
March 13th – March 21st (Spring Break)
5
Tues., March 23rd
Hollywood’s Amazon
Readings:
Brian Godfrey, “Regional Depiction in Film” Geographical Review 83, 4 (1993): 428-440.
Jacquelyn Kilpatrick, Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film, pp.xv-xviii; 104-106
**Film: (8)
At Play in the Fields of the Lord
Medicine Man
The Emerald Forest
Thurs., March 25th
Herzog’s Amazon
Readings:
Brad Prager, The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth, pp. 35-45.
Film:
Burden of Dreams
Tues., March 30th
Documentary Film and the Amazon
Readings:
Geoffrey O’Connell, Amazon Journal, TBA
**Film: (9)
Amazon Journal
Thurs., April 1st
Political Film/Third Cinema and the Amazon
In-Class Film: Iracema
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Section IV: Save the Rainforest
Tues., April 6th
Short Assignment #3 Due (Film Analysis)
Finish Iracema, discussion of film
Thurs., April 8th
Gold!
Readings:
Sebastião Salgado, Serra Pelada mine, TBA
Candace Slater, “Gold as a Woman,” Entangled Edens, pp. 102-132
Tues., April 15th
Environmental Films
Readings:
Candace Slater, Entangled Edens, pp. 129-204
Manuela Carneiro da Cunha and Mauro W.B. de Almeida, “Indigenous People, Traditional
People and Conservation in the Amazon,” Daedalus 129, 2 (Spring 2000): 315-338.
**Film: (10)
Children of the Amazon
Thurs., April 17th
Chico Mendes and the Environmental Movement
Film:
The Burning Season
**Readings: (11)
Luis Sepúlveda, The Old Man Who Read Love Stories
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Tues., April 20th
Short Assignment #4: Group Presentations – Save the Amazon
Section V: Local Cultural Production
Thurs., April 22nd
Kayapo and Media – Ethnographic Film
Film:
The Kayapo: Out of the Forest
**Readings: (12)
Beth Conklin and Laura Graham, “The Shifting Middle Ground: Amazonian Indians and EcoPolitics,” American Anthropologist 97, 4 (Dec 1995): 695-710.
Terence Turner, TBA
Tues., April 27th
Video in the Village Project
Film In-class: Maragnmotxingmo mïang: From the Ikpeng Children to the World
**Readings: (13)
Beth Conklin, “Body Paint, Feathers, and VCRs: Aesthetics and Authenticity in Amazonian
Activism,” American Ethnologist 24, 4 (1997): 711-737.
Jennifer Deger, “(In)Visible Difference: Framing Questions of Culture, Media and
Technology,” Shimmering Screens: Making Films in an Aboriginal Community, pp. 34-59.
Film:
Video in the Villages Presents Itself
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Thurs., April 29th
Video in the Village Project
In Class: The Rainy Season
**Film: (14)
Ngune elü: The Day When the Moon Menstruated
Tues., May 4th: Last Class
Recent Commercial Film and Traditional Narratives: Comparing and Contrasting
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