Bem-vindos!
The Portuguese and Brazilian Studies section of the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at UIUC is dedicated to the study of the Portuguese language and of Brazilian, Portuguese, and Lusophone African literatures and cultures. The research and teaching interests of the section's faculty explore specific national contexts, but also analyzes the interconnections between the lusophone cultures from interdisciplinary perspectives. Moreover, our work discusses the dialogues between Brazil and Spanish-American countries, and its interactions within the Americas. Our faculty also investigates the cultural production of the Brazilian and Portuguese-speaking communities in the United States. Our areas of expertise include cinema studies, racial, social, and gender relations, immigration, fiction and history, the conceptualization of space, constructions of national identity, modernity and postmodernity, and colonial and postcolonial contexts.
Students at both the graduate and undergraduate level explore questions of cultural identity, difference, contact and representation across a wide range of historical periods. Our students generally also take courses in departments such as History, Anthropology, Music, Caribbean and Latin American Studies, and Comparative Literature, as our department encourages innovative work that crosses disciplinary boundaries.