2003 Events

Fashion Shows and Broadway Plays: Performing Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States, 1971-78

James Green
California State University and BRASA

As the Brazilian military stepped up political repression in Brazil in the late 1960s, a cluster of academics, exiles, activists, and clergy initiated a campaign to denounce the government's use of torture against political opponents. Slowly the notion of Brazil as the land of bossa nova, beaches and sun-tanned beauties melded with a more ominous image of the country. The internationally famous fashion designer Zuzu Angel, the anarchist-libertarian Living Theater Collective, playwright Christopher Hampton, and Broadway star Estelle Parsons all projected new visions in the United States about Brazil as the land of torture and repression. This presentation examines the ways these projections of Brazil were performed in New York and Los Angeles, as activists attempted to educate a largely uninformed public about the realities of living under a military dictatorship.

James N. Green is associate professor of Latin American History at California State University, Long Beach and the President of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA). He is the author of the prize-winning book Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil (University of Chicago 1999), that was published in Brazil in 2000. He is currently completing a manuscript for Duke University Press entitled, "No Time for Tears": Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States, 1964-85.

When: Thursday, September 18 5:00pm
Where: Room C203 (on the concourse level)
The Graduate Center
City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016
(@34th Street)

To reserve, send e-mail to bildner@gc.cuny.edu or leave message at (212) 817-2096