Tulane’s earliest connections to Brazil originate in two forms: through Brazilian music and through the teaching of the Portuguese language. This later widened to include exchanges and interactions in other forms that we invite you to explore in this story.
Pre-1980s
Tulane’s first contacts with Brazil were actually mediated by New Orleans itself since music played a central role in beginning to weave these networks. Brazilian culture began to take center stage on campus via musicology programs, especially in the 1940s with the presence of the young Brazilian pianist Egydio de Castro e Silva, who served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Piano at the Newcomb School of Music and a consultant in Portuguese at the College of Arts and Sciences. His hiring, along with other musicians, was done partly in cooperation with the U.S. State Department, who was eager to strengthen the field of area studies. By 1961, the presence of Brazilian musicians had grown to such an extent that it led to the creation of the Interamerican Music Institute, which organized the First Inter-American Conference on Musicology in 1963. The institute funded, among other projects, studies on the history of music in Minas Gerais.
At the same time, Brazilian presence was also growing through Portuguese language teaching. The Portuguese program started in 1947 and by the early 1960s, the Program on Latin American Studies was granted $200,000 to strengthen the area of Brazilian studies and the establishment of a Language and Area Center for Latin American Studies in 1962. This led to a faculty search to expand the program and the hiring of Heitor Martins, who taught at Tulane from 1962 to 1968 when he departed for Indiana University. In 1971, Almir de Campos Bruneti joined the Tulane faculty and would remain the central figure of the Portuguese program until his retirement in 1998.
Over the years, Tulane’s relationship with Brazil expanded as interest from the Business School and the Greater New Orleans business community grew. In 1974, Tulane, in collaboration with The International Trade Mart Council of the Americas, organized a seminar for business executives about Brazil in the World Economy. Likewise, in 1980, as a way to strengthen the business area of CLAS, Richard Greenleaf proposed the creation of a new program on Latin American Economics in collaboration with Exxon, where the energy industries in Brazil would serve as a leading case study.
At the same time, Tulane was looking into furthering its academic exchanges with Brazil. Professor Melvin L. Gruwell, Director of the Center for Teacher Education, led an initiative to take advantage of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s work in the country. In 1975, five deans from Brazilian universities invited CLASP and the Teacher Training Center to form a working group to visit Brazil. Two years later, Provost Robert B Stevens traveled to Brazil with Dean Hugh Thompson and Director Melvin Gruwell to visit five universities in Northeastern Brazil. These tours looked into the possibilities of sending Tulane faculty to provide technical assistance to Brazilian universities, while at the same time promoting student exchange with them.
Outreach and Cultural Events in the 1980s
Toward the end of the 1970s, the Center’s conference, Brazil XXI: Order and Progress in the 21st Century, foreshadowed the increasing amount of cultural study and programming that would be seen in the following decade. Panels on economics and diplomacy were combined with a film screening and a carnival dance performance by Brazilian artists.
This shift toward cultural studies included the creation of academic spaces that problematized Brazilian identity. In 1981, CLAS together with the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Consulate General of Brazil in New Orleans organized a conference on Brazilian National Consciousness, thinking through issues of race, nationalism, politics, and identity in Brazilian culture.
The presence of Brazilian culture also became a way of fostering relationships with the greater New Orleans community, and one such institution that began in the 1980s was Casa Samba. Listen to Bill Lennon describe the creation of Casa Samba.
At the same time, Brazil was a central focus in the general renewal that Latin American Studies at Tulane experienced with the expansion of Cultural Studies. Beyond music, the presence of cinema also grew with film screenings organized by Ana López in collaboration with the Film Buffs of Loyola University, which included films such as Vidas secas (Barren Lives, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1963), Iracema: Uma Transa Amazônica (Iracema, Jorge Bodanzky, 1975), and A Hora da Estrela (Hour of the Star, Suzana Amaral, 1986).
New Waves in the 1990s-2000s
By 1990, Brazilian Studies and Portuguese teaching were at an inflection point. You can read Almir de Campos Bruneti’s perspective and five-year plan in his 1990 proposal, “The Future of Portuguese at Tulane.”
“This is the time for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese to live up to the Portuguese part of its name, and for the administration to commit itself to do everything possible to help Portuguese at Tulane yield its best result ever.“
– Almir de Campos Bruneti
The 1990s would be a time of renewal and the emergence of new waves in different aspects of Brazilian Studies at Tulane. Richard Greenleaf had been advocating for the hiring of more faculty in this area since the 1980s, and the first years of this decade saw the arrival of numerous Brazilianist scholars throughout the Social Sciences and Professional Schools, like Timmons Roberts (Department of Sociology), William Balée (Department of Anthropology), and Carl Kendall (School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine).
Listen to William Balée talk about the 1991 International Congress of the Americas and Tulane’s growing presence in the field of Brazilian Studies.
Furthering this renewal, the second half of the decade saw the arrival of Christopher Dunn in 1996, who began the consolidation of a Brazilianist faculty. The following decade saw new hires in Political Science [Anthony M. Pereira (1999-2010)], Economics [Emilson Silva (2010- )], Ecology [Jeffrey Chambers (2003-2010)], Music [Daniel Sharp (2008- )], Communication [Mauro Porto (2004- )], and Spanish and Portuguese [Idelber Avelar (1999- )].
With their arrival, a new wave of possibilities opened for Brazilian Studies and in 2001, Dunn and Pereira pushed forward the creation of a Brazilian Studies minor.
“This is just to talk a little bit about what we were doing in terms of the programming, the academic programing was to kind of revamp the curriculum. You know, that was kind of a traditional curriculum that was sort of language and then sort of just Brazilian literature, major authors or things like that. And over the years, we’ve really done a lot to kind of open it up to new types of courses. And so right now we do race and ethnicity in Brazilian literature, gender and sexuality.”
– Christopher Dunn
These new hires strengthened the study of Brazil, and further interest grew from Brazil’s rising international relevance after the 2002 presidential election of Lula da Silva. Through the 2000s, Brazilian Studies thrived at Tulane with events that ranged from gender and sexuality to architecture and telenovelas.1
Three highlights from the mid to late 2000s demonstrate Brazil’s prominent status at Tulane. For one, Gilberto Gil, renowned musician and Secretary of Culture during Lula’s presidency, was given an Honorary Doctorate in 2006.
Listen to Christopher Dunn and Bill Lennon discuss Gilberto Gil’s visit to Tulane in 2006.
Soon after in 2008, Tulane hosted the IX Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA) Conference, the main academic venue for sharing scholarship within the Brazilianist community. With over 700 participants, BRASA IX was the largest academic event ever held on the uptown campus of Tulane University and it was held while the spring 2008 semester was in session, which allowed for many students to participate. The great Brazilian literary critic and musician, José Miguel Wisnik performed an aula-show seated at the piano about the deep connections between Brazilian literature and music. The Brazilian Ambassador to the US, Antonio Patriota, was guest of honor and gave an extensive interview to the Tulane Hullabaloo.
The following year, Tulane hosted a week-long commemoration of 50 years of Teatro Oficina, a legendary theater group founded by legendary director José Celso Martinez Correa in 1958. That event brought together members of the local theater community, including John O’Neal of the Free Southern Theater, Kathy Randels, and José Torres Tama to dialogue with José Celso and his partner, Marcelo Drummond.
The renewed impulse of Brazilian Studies in the 21st century also led to a renovation of study abroad programs. While students had gone to Brazil at various times previously, like Norberto Nardi’s architecture tours in the late 1980s, beginning in 2007, Tulane build stronger, continuous programs, first in Rio de Janeiro and, since 2011, in São Paulo.
Below are assorted photos of students in Tulane’s Study Abroad programs in Brazil, 2009-2016.
Brazilian Studies Today
The field of Brazilian Studies was significantly impacted by Hurricane Katrina when an influx of Brazilian migrants who came to rebuild the city formed a community in Uptown. This meant new avenues for connections and relationships to Brazilian community members.
In 2020, Tulane University initiated a six-year term as the host institution for the Brazilian Studies Association with Christopher Dunn serving as Executive Director and Claudia de Brito serving as Administrative Director. The prominence of Brazilian Studies at Tulane was further enhanced with the institutional hosting of the BRASA Secretariat.
The field of Brazilian Studies today comprises a variety of interests, as shown by the wide scope of interests of its current Brazilianist faculty in areas such as literature, media, ethnomusicology, history, art history, ecology, and public health. The strong tradition of Portuguese language training continues, supplemented by activities like Bate-papo and Tudo bem! Portuguese language meetups run by Megwen Loveless, as well as FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) grants that encourage and fund language study in Brazil.
“We meet for our regular Friday, but right outside on the patio of Jones Hall, which to me reminds me of all the moments that I spent as an undergraduate here in that very same courtyard, listening to Brazilian music, enjoying Brazilian cuisine, and again, really coming full circle.”
– Megwen Loveless
In the last 100 years, Brazil’s long and deep connections to New Orleans have fostered a mainstay presence and relevance within the Stone Center’s relations to Latin America. Encompassing music and cinema, business endeavors and social science research, Portuguese language teaching and gender, environmental, and race studies, Brazil and Tulane’s relations enter the next 100 years as strong as ever.
Our story ends with Christopher Dunn discussing the ongoing appeal and relevance of Brazil for Tulane’s students in terms of environmental studies, race and ethnicity, and culture.
Text and Images: Alejandro Kelly-Hopfenblatt
Zemurray-Stone Postdoctoral Fellow
Content Collaborator: Christopher Dunn
Chair of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese
May 2024