Winner of Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research, given by DSA, 2021 Staging Brazil: Choreographies of Capoeira is the first in-depth study of the processes of legitimization and globalization of capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian combat game practiced today throughout the world. Ana Paula Höfling contextualizes the emergence of the two main styles of capoeira, angola and regional, within discourses of race and nation in mid-twentieth century Brazil. This history of capoeira's corporeality, on the page and on the stage, includes analysis of illustrated capoeira manuals and reveals the mutual influences between capoeira practitioners, tourism bureaucrats, intellectuals, artists, and directors of folkloric ensembles. Staging Brazil sheds light on the importance of capoeira in folkloric shows in the 1960s and 70s—both those that catered to tourists visiting Brazil and those that toured abroad and introduced capoeira to the world.

Reading a play and watching it performed onstage are quite different experiences. Likewise, studying a country's theatrical tradition with reference only to playtexts overlooks the vital impact of a play's performance on the audience and on the whole artistic community. In this performance-centered approach to Brazilian theatre since the 1940s, David George explores a total theatrical language—the plays, the companies that produced them, and the performances that set a standard for all future stagings. George structures the discussion around several important companies. He begins with Os Comediantes, whose revolutionary 1943 staging of Nelson Rodrigues' Vestido de Noiva (Bridal Gown) broke with the outmoded comedy-of-manners formula that had dominated the national stage since the nineteenth century. He considers three companies of the 1950s and 1960s—Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia, Teatro de Arena, and Teatro Oficina—along with the 1967 production of O Rei da Vela (The Candle King) by Teatro Oficina. The 1970s represented a wasteland for Brazilian theatre, George finds, in which a repressive military dictatorship muzzled artistic expression. The Grupo Macunaíma brought theatre alive again in the 1980s, with its productions of Macunaíma and Nelson 2 Rodrigues. Common to all theatrical companies, George concludes, was the desire to establish a national aesthetic, free from European and United States models. The creative tension this generated and the successes of modern Brazilian theatre make lively reading for all students of Brazilian and world drama.

2023 Honorable Mention, Brazil Section Humanities Book Prize, Latin American Studies Association (LASA) This book explores visual portrayals of blackness in Brazil to reveal the integral role of visual culture in crafting race and nation across Latin America. In the early twentieth century, Brazil shifted from a nation intent on whitening its population to one billing itself as a racial democracy. Anadelia Romo shows that this shift centered in Salvador, Bahia, where throughout the 1950s, modernist artists and intellectuals forged critical alliances with Afro-Brazilian religious communities of Candomblé to promote their culture and their city. These efforts combined with a growing promotion of tourism to transform what had been one of the busiest slaving depots in the Americas into a popular tourist enclave celebrated for its rich Afro-Brazilian culture. Vibrant illustrations and texts by the likes of Jorge Amado, Pierre Verger, and others contributed to a distinctive iconography of the city, with Afro-Bahians at its center. But these optimistic visions of inclusion, Romo reveals, concealed deep racial inequalities. Illustrating how these visual archetypes laid the foundation for Salvador’s modern racial landscape, this book unveils the ways ethnic and racial populations have been both included and excluded not only in Brazil but in Latin America as a whole.

This volume examines some of the ways that Brazil has been represented and seeks to represent itself in popular media. It looks at social inequalities, racial divisions, and legacies of political restructuring as it illuminates the challenges and opportunities that the nation faces at present and going into preparations for and recovery from the upcoming mega events, both the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. Drawing on the expertise of scholars in the fields of film and media studies, political science, social movement analysis, and cultural studies this volume features chapters examining the role of stereotyped Brazilian identity and myths of what it means to be Brazilian, the growing interest in favela—slum—culture, and sites of resistance in contemporary Brazilian society.

"The practical illustrated guide"--Cover.

In Africanness in Action, author Juan Diego Díaz examines musicians' agency, constructions of blackness and Africanness, musical structure, performance practices, and rhetoric in Brazil, and provides a model for the study of African-derived music in other diasporic locales.

The newest volume of the benchmark bibliography of Latin American studies.

Stages of Conflict brings together an array of dramatic texts, tracing the intersection of theater and social and political life in the Americas over the past five centuries. Historical pieces from the sixteenth century to the present highlight the encounter between indigenous tradition and colonialism, while contributions from modern playwrights such as Virgilio Pinero, Jose Triana, and Denise Stolkos take on the tumultuous political and social upheavals of the past century. The editors have added critical commentary on the origins of each play, affording scholars and students of theater, performance studies, and Latin American studies the opportunity to view the history of a continent through its rich and diverse theatrical traditions.--from publisher's statement.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of Duke University. A portrait of the game of capoeira and its practice across borders Originating in the Black Atlantic world as a fusion of dance and martial art, capoeira was a marginalized practice for much of its history. Today it is globally popular. This ethnographic memoir weaves together the history of capoeira, recent transformations in the practice, and personal insights from author Katya Wesolowski’s thirty years of experience as a capoeirista. Capoeira Connections follows Wesolowski’s journey from novice to instructor while drawing on her decades of research as an anthropologist in Brazil, Angola, Europe, and the United States. In a story of local practice and global flow, Wesolowski offers an intimate portrait of the game and what it means in people’s lives. She reveals camaraderie and conviviality in the capoeira ring as well as tensions and ruptures involving race, gender, and competing claims over how this artful play should be practiced. Capoeira brings people together and yet is never free of histories of struggle, and these too play out in the game’s encounters. In her at once clear-sighted and hopeful analysis, Wesolowski ultimately argues that capoeira offers opportunities for connection, dialogue, and collaboration in a world that is increasingly fractured. In doing so, capoeira can transform lives, create social spheres, and shape mobile futures. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.