Jason Borge | The University of Texas at Austin (original) (raw)

Books by Jason Borge

Duke University Press, 2018

This book traces how jazz helped forge modern identities and national imaginaries in Latin Americ... more This book traces how jazz helped forge modern identities and national imaginaries in Latin America during the mid-twentieth century. Across Latin America jazz functioned as a conduit through which debates about race, sexuality, nation, technology, and modernity raged in newspapers, magazines, literature, and film. For Latin American audiences, critics, and intellectuals—who often understood jazz to stem from social conditions similar to their own—the profound penetration into the fabric of everyday life of musicians like Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker represented the promises of modernity while simultaneously posing a threat to local and national identities. Brazilian antijazz rhetoric branded jazz as a problematic challenge to samba and emblematic of Americanization. In Argentina jazz catalyzed discussions about musical authenticity, race, and national culture, especially in relation to tango. And in Cuba, the widespread popularity of Chano Pozo and Dámaso Pérez Prado challenged the United States' monopoly on jazz. Outlining these hemispheric flows of ideas, bodies, and music, TROPICAL RIFFS elucidates how "America's art form" was, and remains, a transnational project and a collective idea.

Papers by Jason Borge

The Americas, Apr 1, 2005

... 3. Latin American literature—Film and video adaptations. I. Title. ... Consequently, LatinAme... more ... 3. Latin American literature—Film and video adaptations. I. Title. ... Consequently, LatinAmerican intellectuals' reaction to the Hollywood “invasion” was not initially marked by the same urgency that character-ized so much anti-imperialist literature. ...

Chasqui-revista De Literatura Latinoamericana, 2008

... Driven by the powerful US recording industry, given ideographic repre? sentation by Hollywood... more ... Driven by the powerful US recording industry, given ideographic repre? sentation by Hollywood cinema and its journalistic supports, hot jazz and early swing catapulted performers like Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker and Duke Ellington to international promi? nence. ...

Luso-Brazilian Review, May 13, 2014

Afro-Hispanic Review, Apr 1, 2011

When jazz first penetrated the Latin American imaginary in the 1920s, the very word denoted as mu... more When jazz first penetrated the Latin American imaginary in the 1920s, the very word denoted as much a new cultural paradigm as a musical genre, serving as an umbrella term for an ever-expanding web of industries, distribution networks and metropolitan fashions issuing from the modern matrices of Paris, New York, and Los Angeles. As US performers such as Sidney Bechet, Paul Whiteman, and Josephine Baker made headlines overseas and films like The Jazz Singer (1927) played to full houses in Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Lima, avant-garde intellectuals from the region were attempting to break free from the shackles of various cultural establishments and literary traditions, all the while keeping their fingers on the pulse of international trends.Largely, but not entirely, following European models, Latin American vanguards tended at first to relegate jazz to an odd realm of civilized savagery at once synonymous with the North and its others. Indeed, for peripheral intellectuals such as Alejo Carpentier and Mario de Andrade, jazz was in many ways the ideal means of embracing the contradictions of the modern metropolis, seemingly without abandoning either projects of novomundismo or concerns for subaltern cultural practices. Writers of diverse political affiliations rightly saw the arrival of jazz from the United States as inseparable from the rapid spread of film, radio and the recording industry, but also clearly associated it with the hotly debated subject of negritud. Some, like the Mexican Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano, viewed the artifact of the "race record" as a metaphor for the globetrotting mobility, eroticism and exoticism of jazz and those performers rightly or wrongly associated with the music.1 The Peruvian journal Amauta, on the other hand, tended to condemn jazz as part-and-parcel of US cultural imperialism.2 Pioneering popular music magazines such as Brazil's Phonoarte, meanwhile, likewise downplayed the musical innovation of jazz as a commercial assault facilitated by the sophistication of recording technology and the aid of Hollywood's growing mastery of sound cinema.5Like other Latin American avant-garde publications, the Argentine journal Martin Fierro greeted jazz with primitivist ecstasy tinged with fear, yet steered clear of concomitant critiques of the US culture industry. In his 1926 poem "Jazz Band," for example, Leopoldo Marechal compares the sound of the music to the "shouting of children or savages" since this is the only way that "the dead mouths of joy can be revived"(3).4 In an essay published the following year ("Afirmacion del jazzband"), Ulises Petit de Murat credits jazz musicians for coaxing "pure music" from "the abyss of noise" with their peerless technique. At the same time, Petit de Murat maintains that the dynamics of jazz, with its syncopation and "sharp and nervous palette" of sound fills the listener with "almost physical sensations of trepidation" (4). Buenos Aires-based vanguard writers thus mitigated the musical achievements of jazz not by emphasizing the music's commercial impurities, but rather by stressing the ominousness of its transformative power.Although Petit de Murat nominally distances the music from its "fondo racial," the specter of race, with its connotation of syncretism and even witchcraft, is never far off from his purview (4). The study of race in Argentina has frequently been beset by a disavowal of blackness as either an exotic import or an anomaly remote from criollo subjectivity. Yet nowhere in Latin America has jazz criticism been so prolific and intense, particularly in the pivotal period of the 1920s and 1930s, when African-American musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington first came to the attention of local intellectuals and musicians. Indeed, Argentine writers were the first in Latin America to rigorously examine jazz not only as a technically sophisticated musical genre but also as a cultural practice inseparable from the African diaspora and postcolonial legacies of slavery. …

Revista de estudios hispánicos, 2019

Latin American Music Review, 2019

Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos, 2009

Hasta la tercera d?cada del siglo XX, los intelectuales brasile?os, uruguayos y argentinos tratan... more Hasta la tercera d?cada del siglo XX, los intelectuales brasile?os, uruguayos y argentinos tratan el f?tbol deforma principalmente negativa. A partir de los a?os 20, sin embargo, escritores como Juan Parra del Riego, Roberto Arlt, Ezequiel Mart?nez Estrada, Antonio de Alc?ntara Machado, Gilberto Freyre y Gilka Machado empiezan a celebrar a los atletas latinoamericanos (gran parte de ellos provenientes de familias de negros, mestizos e inmigrantes) como emblemas de un individualismo nacional (intuitivo, genial) frente al colectivismo sobrio de los grandes equipos europeos. Las victorias nacionales en el espacio aparentemente nivelador de las competiciones internacionales de la ?poca parecen confirmar sus intervenciones. La celebridad ex?tica elaborada por los intelectuales les permite exhibir su solidaridad con sus "otros pr?ximos" (B. Sarlo) adem?s de su dominio discursivo de los aspectos "peligrosos" del deporte, especialmente la percibida vulgaridad de los hinchas populares, aunque estos provengan de las mismas etnias y clases sociales que los propios jugadores. De tal manera, los nuevos fans letrados pretenden justificar su celebraci?n del f?tbol a trav?s de narrativas ficticias en las que el pleno ?xito de los atletas "subalternos" solamente se consagra por medio de una otredad exaltada.

Duke University Press eBooks, Mar 2, 2018

AmeriQuests, Feb 13, 2008

Maria Helena P.T. Machado's bilingual edition Brazil through Eyes of William James expertly gathe... more Maria Helena P.T. Machado's bilingual edition Brazil through Eyes of William James expertly gathers and examines James' sketches, written correspondence and diaries produced during the Thayer Expedition to the Amazon basin in 1865 and 1866, offering a fascinating glimpse into the formative voyage of one of North America's preeminent thinkers. While adding to an important body of travel literature set in Brazil that spans from the early colonial era (Hans Staden) to the 20 th century (Claude Lévi-Strauss), Harvard UP's handsomely illustrated volume offers a comprehensive cultural and historical critique of the expedition and its participants, contributing to a greater understanding of U.S.-Brazilian relations amid the contentious political climate of the U.S. Civil War Era. James' letters and journal entries are both typical of the era in which they were written and, as Machado's argues in her lengthy introduction (comprising half the volume), highly idiosyncratic documents to the point of being mildly subversive. Consisting primarily of correspondence to his parents, brother Henry and sister Alice, James' missives raise considerable doubts about the expedition's defining goals-namely, to find evidence supporting the creationist agenda of leader and Harvard luminary Louis Agassiz. As Machado points out, Agazziz was one of Charles Darwin's most formidable and charismatic critics as well as one of the foremost U.S. public intellectuals of the period. As such, the Swiss-born scientist received a great deal of financial backing and accolades from both the U.S. South and imperial Brazilian government. Although on a number of occasions James in his letters declares admiration for his professor, in his journal entries he reveals the full range of his sentiments: that he abhors the tedious work of collecting species after new species-each new discovery evidence, in Agazziz's mind, of the "stasis" of nature and therefore a repudiation of evolutionary theory. James clearly considers his mentor intellectually impressive and physically tireless yet something of a self-righteous blowhard. "[N]ever," he writes, "did a man utter a greater amount of humbug." James' amusing caricatures of Agazziz and fellow voyagers reinforce his irreverent attitude toward their central mission-and provide a clear indication as to why he chose to abort the Thayer Expedition after eight months of travel. Machado's critical introduction to James' writing brings pointed historical analysis to the collection's informal impressions. Agazziz's questionable ethnographic practices during the trip, Machado suggests, cement James growing antipathy toward him. James witnesses how the Swiss scientist, for example, coerces a number of Amazonian Indians and mestiças to pose naked for "scientific" purposes. James' own attitude toward his hosts, as Machado repeatedly underscores, is quite different. The young medical student marvels, for example, at the "urbane" quality of even the most uneducated Brazilians he encounters. "Is it race or is it circumstance that makes these people so refined and well bred?" he wonders in one journal entry. "No gentleman of Europe has better manners and yet these are peasants." Although Machado painstakingly frames the first-hand accounts of James' narrative in the cultural and scientific debates of the period, both in Brazil and North America, she also suggests that the Amazonian expedition-which included a layover in Rio de Janeiro in which James apparently contracted smallpox-had a seminal impact on the philosopher's later work. Occasionally, Machado overreaches slightly to make her point. Like James scholar Daniel Bjork, Machado strongly suggests that the Thayer Expedition served as the genesis of James' key concept of "stream of thought" or "stream of consciousness." In particular, she cites the same passage Bjork uses to make his case, conjecturing that "[t]he

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Dec 1, 2001

At Žrst glance, Horacio Quiroga and Monteiro Lobato may seem unlikely pioneers of Latin American ... more At Žrst glance, Horacio Quiroga and Monteiro Lobato may seem unlikely pioneers of Latin American pop subversion and Žlmic Žction. Situated some distance from early twentieth-century political and intellectual discourse dominated by such Žgures as José Vasconcelos, Manuel Ugarte and Gilberto Freyre, seemingly indifferent to reigning debates over nationality, ethnicity and imperialism, Quiroga and Lobato nevertheless offer an abundance of Žctional and non-Žctional prose on US popular cinema. They are not alone among contemporaneous Latin American writers in their preoccupation with Žlm in general and Hollywood in particular. The Mexican José Juan Tablada and the Brazilian João do Rio, for example, dedicate a good deal of critical writing to the subject well before Quiroga, Borges, Roberto Arlt and others tackle Žlm in earnest. Nor do Quiroga and Lobato offer an œuvre of Hollywood-based narrative nearly as extensive as those of later writers such as Manuel Puig and Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Perhaps more than any other Latin American writers of their time, however, Quiroga and Lobato use the cinema as a springboard for a unique Žctional discourse on national and ethnic identity. Their work thus constitutes an important—and sometimes overlooked—point of departure for any discussion of early Latin American narrative representations of Hollywood Žlm. Nowhere is this cinematic discourse more evident than in Quiroga’s story ‘Miss Dorothy Phillips, mi esposa’, in which the author deftly crafts a narrative out of the dreams and insecurities of an Argentine bureaucrat intent on marrying himself off to a Hollywood movie star. By constructing his story on a series of lies and falsiŽcations, Quiroga in one brilliant stroke mimics cinematic form at the same time as he bases his entire story thematically on the cinema, his protagonist struggles to free himself from the hegemony Hollywood exerts over him by sheer force of his imagination creating, in essence, his own private Hollywood. Monteiro Lobato, meanwhile, achieves a similar effect in his 1926 novel, O Choque das Raças. Like Quiroga, Lobato uses a peculiar literary discourse to problematize issues of class and ethnicity with regard to North America. At the same, Lobato’s novel empowers its Latin American narrator through a highly cinematic technique that rivals the apparatus which the narrative itself describes—a ‘virtual’ time machine repeatedly identiŽed with the United States. Thus both writers treat Žlm formally and not just thematically, and it is just such cinematic form which epitomizes the 1920s and at the same time sets Quiroga and Lobato apart from many of their contemporaries. In the

Luso-Brazilian Review, Jun 1, 2007

O presente artigo oferece uma aproximação teórica, analítica e histórica à vida e obra de Olympio... more O presente artigo oferece uma aproximação teórica, analítica e histórica à vida e obra de Olympio Guilherme, jornalista, ator, cineasta e fi nalmente romancista, cuja produção literária e cinematográfi ca hollywoodiana é sem par nas letras brasileiras. A breve carreira de Guilherme é especialmente notável porque foi narrada quase totalmente por ele mesmo. Trata-se, porém, de uma narrativa baseada principalmente numa série de fracassos pessoais. Apesar de ter vencido ainda no Brasil um concurso para atores promovido pela Fox, que o leva para os Estados Unidos em 1927, Guilherme nunca chegou a se tornar uma estrela de Hollywood. Embora ele tenha tentado criar sua própria celebridade produzindo um fi lme semi-autobiográfi co (Fome) sobre as lutas de um ator latino-americano em Hollywood, o fi lme, não obstante suas várias inovações técnicas, não conseguiu nem público nem crítica favorável. Os vários desencontros quixotescos de Guilherme serviram de base às suas várias crônicas publicadas na revista carioca Cinearte. Mais tarde, Guilherme converteu em fi cção suas experiências como ator e jornalista no romance Hollywood, o qual constitui uma crítica amarga não somente à comercialização da indústria cinematográfi ca nos primórdios do cinema falado (nesse sentido, trata-se do primeiro romance sobre Hollywood de um escritor brasileiro e um dos primeiros de um latino-americano), como também uma defesa da expressão artística "pura" diante dos avanços implacáveis da cultura de massa norte-americana. Quando a Fox disse afi nal que Olympio Guilherme não dava para nada, ele resolveu ser tudo.-Cinearte, July 31, 1929 In 1920s Brazil, Renato Ortiz writes, "an intellectual's relationship with the public started through the mass media." Due to the anemic institutionaliza-158 Luso-Brazilian Review 44:1

Luso-Brazilian Review, Dec 1, 2009

Shawn Smallman's study, Th e AIDS Pandemic in Latin America, provides the most complete overview ... more Shawn Smallman's study, Th e AIDS Pandemic in Latin America, provides the most complete overview to date of the social, cultural, economic and political dimensions of HIV and AIDS in the Latin American region. Th e book is divided into four distinct parts, focusing on the epidemic in the Caribbean (with primary emphasis on Cuba and Haiti), Brazil, Mexico and Central America, and Spanish South America. Th is geographical framing allows Smallman to highlight both a number of similarities and diff erences in the shape of the epidemic in diff erent countries and diff erent parts of the region as well as important diff erences in the ways in which diff erent societies have responded to it. Th e AIDS Pandemic in Latin America is particularly eff ective in integrating discussions of epidemiology with social and political history, as well as with the analysis of sexual culture, gender power inequalities, and similar issues, in order to provide a nuanced account of the complexities of the HIV epidemic across the Latin American and Caribbean region. Equally important, he manages to do this while at the same time weaving into his analysis the stories of concrete individuals and the details of real people's lives, collected through numerous fi eld visits to diff erent countries, in order to highlight the human dimensions of the struggle against a terrible epidemic that has devastated the lives of so many families and communities around the world. It is important to emphasize the special place that Brazil has, both in the region's broader response to the epidemic and in Smallman's analysis. Brazil has been widely recognized internationally for its pioneering and progressive policies in response to HIV and AIDS. Seeking to understand the reasons for Brazil's apparent success in this regard fi gures prominently in Smallman's analysis in Th e AIDS Pandemic in Latin America. Smallman eff ectively describes the initial emergence of the epidemic in Brazil among gay and bisexual men (whether self-identifi ed as gay or not) and other especially vulnerable populations such as injecting drug users, as well as the gradual heterosexualization and feminization of the epidemic over time. He also provides a detailed and accurate account of the historical changes in the Brazilian response to HIV and

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Sep 1, 2013

In his landmark study Hybrid Cultures, Néstor García Canclini rejects originality and its opposit... more In his landmark study Hybrid Cultures, Néstor García Canclini rejects originality and its opposite – imitation – as inadequate analytical paradigms for Latin American cultural practices. This paper argues for a reevaluation of the imitation paradigm, arguing that it should be understood neither as a synonym of colonial subordination (as García Canclini implies) nor, in Homi Bhabha's sense, as a dangerously ‘destabilizing’ sign of ‘partial presence.’ Glissant's concept of détour (diversion) is perhaps a more appropriate mode of analysis, since it captures the ‘playful’ oscillation between the extremes of mimesis outlined by García Canclini and Bhabha. Latin American film comedy's relationship with Hollywood from the 1930 through the 1950s – and specifically its wide-ranging treatment of Charlie Chaplin's work – illustrates such mimetic ‘diversions.’ From outright impersonation to homage and quotation, spanning the Chaplinesque adaptations of Cantinflas, Tin Tan, and Luis Sandrini, and the multivalent parodies of Brazilian chanchadas, Latin American film comedy of the period used imitation as a shifting, elastic, and critical trope revealing local and national subjects' contentious links with hegemonic models.

Revista De Estudios Hispanicos, May 1, 2006

Duke University Press, 2018

This book traces how jazz helped forge modern identities and national imaginaries in Latin Americ... more This book traces how jazz helped forge modern identities and national imaginaries in Latin America during the mid-twentieth century. Across Latin America jazz functioned as a conduit through which debates about race, sexuality, nation, technology, and modernity raged in newspapers, magazines, literature, and film. For Latin American audiences, critics, and intellectuals—who often understood jazz to stem from social conditions similar to their own—the profound penetration into the fabric of everyday life of musicians like Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker represented the promises of modernity while simultaneously posing a threat to local and national identities. Brazilian antijazz rhetoric branded jazz as a problematic challenge to samba and emblematic of Americanization. In Argentina jazz catalyzed discussions about musical authenticity, race, and national culture, especially in relation to tango. And in Cuba, the widespread popularity of Chano Pozo and Dámaso Pérez Prado challenged the United States' monopoly on jazz. Outlining these hemispheric flows of ideas, bodies, and music, TROPICAL RIFFS elucidates how "America's art form" was, and remains, a transnational project and a collective idea.

The Americas, Apr 1, 2005

... 3. Latin American literature—Film and video adaptations. I. Title. ... Consequently, LatinAme... more ... 3. Latin American literature—Film and video adaptations. I. Title. ... Consequently, LatinAmerican intellectuals' reaction to the Hollywood “invasion” was not initially marked by the same urgency that character-ized so much anti-imperialist literature. ...

Chasqui-revista De Literatura Latinoamericana, 2008

... Driven by the powerful US recording industry, given ideographic repre? sentation by Hollywood... more ... Driven by the powerful US recording industry, given ideographic repre? sentation by Hollywood cinema and its journalistic supports, hot jazz and early swing catapulted performers like Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker and Duke Ellington to international promi? nence. ...

Luso-Brazilian Review, May 13, 2014

Afro-Hispanic Review, Apr 1, 2011

When jazz first penetrated the Latin American imaginary in the 1920s, the very word denoted as mu... more When jazz first penetrated the Latin American imaginary in the 1920s, the very word denoted as much a new cultural paradigm as a musical genre, serving as an umbrella term for an ever-expanding web of industries, distribution networks and metropolitan fashions issuing from the modern matrices of Paris, New York, and Los Angeles. As US performers such as Sidney Bechet, Paul Whiteman, and Josephine Baker made headlines overseas and films like The Jazz Singer (1927) played to full houses in Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Lima, avant-garde intellectuals from the region were attempting to break free from the shackles of various cultural establishments and literary traditions, all the while keeping their fingers on the pulse of international trends.Largely, but not entirely, following European models, Latin American vanguards tended at first to relegate jazz to an odd realm of civilized savagery at once synonymous with the North and its others. Indeed, for peripheral intellectuals such as Alejo Carpentier and Mario de Andrade, jazz was in many ways the ideal means of embracing the contradictions of the modern metropolis, seemingly without abandoning either projects of novomundismo or concerns for subaltern cultural practices. Writers of diverse political affiliations rightly saw the arrival of jazz from the United States as inseparable from the rapid spread of film, radio and the recording industry, but also clearly associated it with the hotly debated subject of negritud. Some, like the Mexican Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano, viewed the artifact of the "race record" as a metaphor for the globetrotting mobility, eroticism and exoticism of jazz and those performers rightly or wrongly associated with the music.1 The Peruvian journal Amauta, on the other hand, tended to condemn jazz as part-and-parcel of US cultural imperialism.2 Pioneering popular music magazines such as Brazil's Phonoarte, meanwhile, likewise downplayed the musical innovation of jazz as a commercial assault facilitated by the sophistication of recording technology and the aid of Hollywood's growing mastery of sound cinema.5Like other Latin American avant-garde publications, the Argentine journal Martin Fierro greeted jazz with primitivist ecstasy tinged with fear, yet steered clear of concomitant critiques of the US culture industry. In his 1926 poem "Jazz Band," for example, Leopoldo Marechal compares the sound of the music to the "shouting of children or savages" since this is the only way that "the dead mouths of joy can be revived"(3).4 In an essay published the following year ("Afirmacion del jazzband"), Ulises Petit de Murat credits jazz musicians for coaxing "pure music" from "the abyss of noise" with their peerless technique. At the same time, Petit de Murat maintains that the dynamics of jazz, with its syncopation and "sharp and nervous palette" of sound fills the listener with "almost physical sensations of trepidation" (4). Buenos Aires-based vanguard writers thus mitigated the musical achievements of jazz not by emphasizing the music's commercial impurities, but rather by stressing the ominousness of its transformative power.Although Petit de Murat nominally distances the music from its "fondo racial," the specter of race, with its connotation of syncretism and even witchcraft, is never far off from his purview (4). The study of race in Argentina has frequently been beset by a disavowal of blackness as either an exotic import or an anomaly remote from criollo subjectivity. Yet nowhere in Latin America has jazz criticism been so prolific and intense, particularly in the pivotal period of the 1920s and 1930s, when African-American musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington first came to the attention of local intellectuals and musicians. Indeed, Argentine writers were the first in Latin America to rigorously examine jazz not only as a technically sophisticated musical genre but also as a cultural practice inseparable from the African diaspora and postcolonial legacies of slavery. …

Revista de estudios hispánicos, 2019

Latin American Music Review, 2019

Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos, 2009

Hasta la tercera d?cada del siglo XX, los intelectuales brasile?os, uruguayos y argentinos tratan... more Hasta la tercera d?cada del siglo XX, los intelectuales brasile?os, uruguayos y argentinos tratan el f?tbol deforma principalmente negativa. A partir de los a?os 20, sin embargo, escritores como Juan Parra del Riego, Roberto Arlt, Ezequiel Mart?nez Estrada, Antonio de Alc?ntara Machado, Gilberto Freyre y Gilka Machado empiezan a celebrar a los atletas latinoamericanos (gran parte de ellos provenientes de familias de negros, mestizos e inmigrantes) como emblemas de un individualismo nacional (intuitivo, genial) frente al colectivismo sobrio de los grandes equipos europeos. Las victorias nacionales en el espacio aparentemente nivelador de las competiciones internacionales de la ?poca parecen confirmar sus intervenciones. La celebridad ex?tica elaborada por los intelectuales les permite exhibir su solidaridad con sus "otros pr?ximos" (B. Sarlo) adem?s de su dominio discursivo de los aspectos "peligrosos" del deporte, especialmente la percibida vulgaridad de los hinchas populares, aunque estos provengan de las mismas etnias y clases sociales que los propios jugadores. De tal manera, los nuevos fans letrados pretenden justificar su celebraci?n del f?tbol a trav?s de narrativas ficticias en las que el pleno ?xito de los atletas "subalternos" solamente se consagra por medio de una otredad exaltada.

Duke University Press eBooks, Mar 2, 2018

AmeriQuests, Feb 13, 2008

Maria Helena P.T. Machado's bilingual edition Brazil through Eyes of William James expertly gathe... more Maria Helena P.T. Machado's bilingual edition Brazil through Eyes of William James expertly gathers and examines James' sketches, written correspondence and diaries produced during the Thayer Expedition to the Amazon basin in 1865 and 1866, offering a fascinating glimpse into the formative voyage of one of North America's preeminent thinkers. While adding to an important body of travel literature set in Brazil that spans from the early colonial era (Hans Staden) to the 20 th century (Claude Lévi-Strauss), Harvard UP's handsomely illustrated volume offers a comprehensive cultural and historical critique of the expedition and its participants, contributing to a greater understanding of U.S.-Brazilian relations amid the contentious political climate of the U.S. Civil War Era. James' letters and journal entries are both typical of the era in which they were written and, as Machado's argues in her lengthy introduction (comprising half the volume), highly idiosyncratic documents to the point of being mildly subversive. Consisting primarily of correspondence to his parents, brother Henry and sister Alice, James' missives raise considerable doubts about the expedition's defining goals-namely, to find evidence supporting the creationist agenda of leader and Harvard luminary Louis Agassiz. As Machado points out, Agazziz was one of Charles Darwin's most formidable and charismatic critics as well as one of the foremost U.S. public intellectuals of the period. As such, the Swiss-born scientist received a great deal of financial backing and accolades from both the U.S. South and imperial Brazilian government. Although on a number of occasions James in his letters declares admiration for his professor, in his journal entries he reveals the full range of his sentiments: that he abhors the tedious work of collecting species after new species-each new discovery evidence, in Agazziz's mind, of the "stasis" of nature and therefore a repudiation of evolutionary theory. James clearly considers his mentor intellectually impressive and physically tireless yet something of a self-righteous blowhard. "[N]ever," he writes, "did a man utter a greater amount of humbug." James' amusing caricatures of Agazziz and fellow voyagers reinforce his irreverent attitude toward their central mission-and provide a clear indication as to why he chose to abort the Thayer Expedition after eight months of travel. Machado's critical introduction to James' writing brings pointed historical analysis to the collection's informal impressions. Agazziz's questionable ethnographic practices during the trip, Machado suggests, cement James growing antipathy toward him. James witnesses how the Swiss scientist, for example, coerces a number of Amazonian Indians and mestiças to pose naked for "scientific" purposes. James' own attitude toward his hosts, as Machado repeatedly underscores, is quite different. The young medical student marvels, for example, at the "urbane" quality of even the most uneducated Brazilians he encounters. "Is it race or is it circumstance that makes these people so refined and well bred?" he wonders in one journal entry. "No gentleman of Europe has better manners and yet these are peasants." Although Machado painstakingly frames the first-hand accounts of James' narrative in the cultural and scientific debates of the period, both in Brazil and North America, she also suggests that the Amazonian expedition-which included a layover in Rio de Janeiro in which James apparently contracted smallpox-had a seminal impact on the philosopher's later work. Occasionally, Machado overreaches slightly to make her point. Like James scholar Daniel Bjork, Machado strongly suggests that the Thayer Expedition served as the genesis of James' key concept of "stream of thought" or "stream of consciousness." In particular, she cites the same passage Bjork uses to make his case, conjecturing that "[t]he

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Dec 1, 2001

At Žrst glance, Horacio Quiroga and Monteiro Lobato may seem unlikely pioneers of Latin American ... more At Žrst glance, Horacio Quiroga and Monteiro Lobato may seem unlikely pioneers of Latin American pop subversion and Žlmic Žction. Situated some distance from early twentieth-century political and intellectual discourse dominated by such Žgures as José Vasconcelos, Manuel Ugarte and Gilberto Freyre, seemingly indifferent to reigning debates over nationality, ethnicity and imperialism, Quiroga and Lobato nevertheless offer an abundance of Žctional and non-Žctional prose on US popular cinema. They are not alone among contemporaneous Latin American writers in their preoccupation with Žlm in general and Hollywood in particular. The Mexican José Juan Tablada and the Brazilian João do Rio, for example, dedicate a good deal of critical writing to the subject well before Quiroga, Borges, Roberto Arlt and others tackle Žlm in earnest. Nor do Quiroga and Lobato offer an œuvre of Hollywood-based narrative nearly as extensive as those of later writers such as Manuel Puig and Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Perhaps more than any other Latin American writers of their time, however, Quiroga and Lobato use the cinema as a springboard for a unique Žctional discourse on national and ethnic identity. Their work thus constitutes an important—and sometimes overlooked—point of departure for any discussion of early Latin American narrative representations of Hollywood Žlm. Nowhere is this cinematic discourse more evident than in Quiroga’s story ‘Miss Dorothy Phillips, mi esposa’, in which the author deftly crafts a narrative out of the dreams and insecurities of an Argentine bureaucrat intent on marrying himself off to a Hollywood movie star. By constructing his story on a series of lies and falsiŽcations, Quiroga in one brilliant stroke mimics cinematic form at the same time as he bases his entire story thematically on the cinema, his protagonist struggles to free himself from the hegemony Hollywood exerts over him by sheer force of his imagination creating, in essence, his own private Hollywood. Monteiro Lobato, meanwhile, achieves a similar effect in his 1926 novel, O Choque das Raças. Like Quiroga, Lobato uses a peculiar literary discourse to problematize issues of class and ethnicity with regard to North America. At the same, Lobato’s novel empowers its Latin American narrator through a highly cinematic technique that rivals the apparatus which the narrative itself describes—a ‘virtual’ time machine repeatedly identiŽed with the United States. Thus both writers treat Žlm formally and not just thematically, and it is just such cinematic form which epitomizes the 1920s and at the same time sets Quiroga and Lobato apart from many of their contemporaries. In the

Luso-Brazilian Review, Jun 1, 2007

O presente artigo oferece uma aproximação teórica, analítica e histórica à vida e obra de Olympio... more O presente artigo oferece uma aproximação teórica, analítica e histórica à vida e obra de Olympio Guilherme, jornalista, ator, cineasta e fi nalmente romancista, cuja produção literária e cinematográfi ca hollywoodiana é sem par nas letras brasileiras. A breve carreira de Guilherme é especialmente notável porque foi narrada quase totalmente por ele mesmo. Trata-se, porém, de uma narrativa baseada principalmente numa série de fracassos pessoais. Apesar de ter vencido ainda no Brasil um concurso para atores promovido pela Fox, que o leva para os Estados Unidos em 1927, Guilherme nunca chegou a se tornar uma estrela de Hollywood. Embora ele tenha tentado criar sua própria celebridade produzindo um fi lme semi-autobiográfi co (Fome) sobre as lutas de um ator latino-americano em Hollywood, o fi lme, não obstante suas várias inovações técnicas, não conseguiu nem público nem crítica favorável. Os vários desencontros quixotescos de Guilherme serviram de base às suas várias crônicas publicadas na revista carioca Cinearte. Mais tarde, Guilherme converteu em fi cção suas experiências como ator e jornalista no romance Hollywood, o qual constitui uma crítica amarga não somente à comercialização da indústria cinematográfi ca nos primórdios do cinema falado (nesse sentido, trata-se do primeiro romance sobre Hollywood de um escritor brasileiro e um dos primeiros de um latino-americano), como também uma defesa da expressão artística "pura" diante dos avanços implacáveis da cultura de massa norte-americana. Quando a Fox disse afi nal que Olympio Guilherme não dava para nada, ele resolveu ser tudo.-Cinearte, July 31, 1929 In 1920s Brazil, Renato Ortiz writes, "an intellectual's relationship with the public started through the mass media." Due to the anemic institutionaliza-158 Luso-Brazilian Review 44:1

Luso-Brazilian Review, Dec 1, 2009

Shawn Smallman's study, Th e AIDS Pandemic in Latin America, provides the most complete overview ... more Shawn Smallman's study, Th e AIDS Pandemic in Latin America, provides the most complete overview to date of the social, cultural, economic and political dimensions of HIV and AIDS in the Latin American region. Th e book is divided into four distinct parts, focusing on the epidemic in the Caribbean (with primary emphasis on Cuba and Haiti), Brazil, Mexico and Central America, and Spanish South America. Th is geographical framing allows Smallman to highlight both a number of similarities and diff erences in the shape of the epidemic in diff erent countries and diff erent parts of the region as well as important diff erences in the ways in which diff erent societies have responded to it. Th e AIDS Pandemic in Latin America is particularly eff ective in integrating discussions of epidemiology with social and political history, as well as with the analysis of sexual culture, gender power inequalities, and similar issues, in order to provide a nuanced account of the complexities of the HIV epidemic across the Latin American and Caribbean region. Equally important, he manages to do this while at the same time weaving into his analysis the stories of concrete individuals and the details of real people's lives, collected through numerous fi eld visits to diff erent countries, in order to highlight the human dimensions of the struggle against a terrible epidemic that has devastated the lives of so many families and communities around the world. It is important to emphasize the special place that Brazil has, both in the region's broader response to the epidemic and in Smallman's analysis. Brazil has been widely recognized internationally for its pioneering and progressive policies in response to HIV and AIDS. Seeking to understand the reasons for Brazil's apparent success in this regard fi gures prominently in Smallman's analysis in Th e AIDS Pandemic in Latin America. Smallman eff ectively describes the initial emergence of the epidemic in Brazil among gay and bisexual men (whether self-identifi ed as gay or not) and other especially vulnerable populations such as injecting drug users, as well as the gradual heterosexualization and feminization of the epidemic over time. He also provides a detailed and accurate account of the historical changes in the Brazilian response to HIV and

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Sep 1, 2013

In his landmark study Hybrid Cultures, Néstor García Canclini rejects originality and its opposit... more In his landmark study Hybrid Cultures, Néstor García Canclini rejects originality and its opposite – imitation – as inadequate analytical paradigms for Latin American cultural practices. This paper argues for a reevaluation of the imitation paradigm, arguing that it should be understood neither as a synonym of colonial subordination (as García Canclini implies) nor, in Homi Bhabha's sense, as a dangerously ‘destabilizing’ sign of ‘partial presence.’ Glissant's concept of détour (diversion) is perhaps a more appropriate mode of analysis, since it captures the ‘playful’ oscillation between the extremes of mimesis outlined by García Canclini and Bhabha. Latin American film comedy's relationship with Hollywood from the 1930 through the 1950s – and specifically its wide-ranging treatment of Charlie Chaplin's work – illustrates such mimetic ‘diversions.’ From outright impersonation to homage and quotation, spanning the Chaplinesque adaptations of Cantinflas, Tin Tan, and Luis Sandrini, and the multivalent parodies of Brazilian chanchadas, Latin American film comedy of the period used imitation as a shifting, elastic, and critical trope revealing local and national subjects' contentious links with hegemonic models.

Revista De Estudios Hispanicos, May 1, 2006

Revista De Estudios Hispanicos, 2008

El clown inglés no constituye un tipo, sino más bien una institución, tan respetable al menos com... more El clown inglés no constituye un tipo, sino más bien una institución, tan respetable al menos como la cámara de los lores. El arte del clown significa el domesticamiento de la bufonería salvaje y nómade del bohemio, según el gusto y las necesidades de una refinada sociedad capitalista.-José Carlos Mariátegui, "Esquema de una explicación de Chaplin" (168)

Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes, 2018

2013 and the justice denied to his victims is placed alongside lynching in the highlands and the ... more 2013 and the justice denied to his victims is placed alongside lynching in the highlands and the formation of rondas, or local patrols that ostensibly safeguard communities from petty criminals. Clever use is made of the baffling 2009 case of Rodrigo Rosenberg, who staged his own assassination in an attempt to frame former President Alvaro Colom for corruption and murder. Such examples demonstrate the complicated nature of guilt and justice in a neoliberal state in which lines between the two are routinely blurred, thus speaking volumes to the ethics of trademark infringement by Maya apparel producers in highland communities. Thomas' Regulating Style is essential reading for those seeking to untangle the multitudinous threads of contemporary Guatemala.

DownBeat magazine, 2018

A review of TROPICAL RIFFS

Luso Brazilian Review, 2009

The Americas Review, 2006

Luso-Brazilian Review, 2013

Luso-Brazilian Review, 2010

AmeriQuests, 2008

Book Review

This YouTube playlist (which includes commentary) gives a sampling of the performers and performa... more This YouTube playlist (which includes commentary) gives a sampling of the performers and performances that speak to the main issues covered in the five chapters of my book TROPICAL RIFFS: LATIN AMERICA AND THE POLITICS OF JAZZ (Duke University Press, 2018). The playlist is meant to enhance and complement readings of the book, and may be helpful to teachers who would like to includes sections of the book in course assignments.