The need to take stock on the state, the significance and the academic limits of Brazilian cultural studies is overdue: not since 2000 and the Kings College London conference entitled Brazil – Representing the Nation: Alternative Voices and Identities in the Year 2000, and the University of Manchester’s The New Latin Americanism: Cultural Studies Beyond Borders (2002) have Brazilian cultural studies been laid open to scrutiny in UK academia in the context of a conference open to all. One key development in the intervening 10+ years has been the impressive growth of access to the internet and digital technologies in Brazil, which has not just generated new objects of study, but also stimulated a rethinking of established objects of study and the methodologies used to analyse them.
Overall, despite Brazil’s size, its increasing importance in terms of its international profile and investment in the culture industries, the attention it has been drawing from the organisation of mega-events, the breadth and volume of its cultural production and the range of research being carried out on this topic by UK and mainland European scholars, Brazil is still too frequently omitted from broader discussions of Latin American culture, or it is subsumed within wider discussions where its cultural specificities are ultimately elided. Whilst this conference will focus on Brazilian cultural analysis, it will also include contributions from scholars working on Brazilian culture from outside Brazilian studies per se, reflecting the event’s consideration of Brazil in global, comparative context.
REBRAC 