Room: 1.39
Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 8335
Fax : +44 (0)20 8980 5400
email: e.vieira@qmul.ac.uk

Else R P Vieira had a previous career in Brazil. After visiting professorships in Oxford and Nottingham, she came to Queen Mary (2002) where she has introduced Brazilian Cultural Studies, with a focus on film and music, and Brazilian Social Cinema. She has also introduced a course on film representations of the history of dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Postcolonial theory underlies another new course assessing Portugal’s achievements vis-à-vis the expressions of the Lusophone cultures (Angola, Brazil, East Timor, Goa, Macao, Mozambique). Other existing courses on Spanish America’s novel and poetry were broadened by the inclusion of the Brazilian dimension and the exploration of areas of convergences and differences between the two blocs. Her MA course is Sighting Gender and Sexuality in Latin American Film. Her comparatist bias is reflected in her ongoing AHRC-funded research project Screening Exclusion: Brazilian and Argentine Documentary Film-Making, which compares the 21st century boom of the documentary in these two countries.

Her last book, City of God in Several Voices: Brazilian Social Cinema as Action (2005), conceived for the visit of the actors of the film City of God to Queen Mary, reflects one of her major research interests: the expressions of minorities. Her previous project focused on the politicization of the expression of the dispossessed; the resulting database, The Sights and Voices of Dispossession: The Fight for the Land and the Emerging Culture of the MST (The Movement of the Landless Rural Workers of Brazil), hosted by the University of Nottingham, and which comprises a first-hand organization of the expressions of the landless rural workers in Brazil (over 20 million people) across several media as well as reference material. An ongoing anthology articulates the expression of Brazilian emigrants, an unprecedented phenomenon in Brazilian history.

She is currently co-directing with Dr. Maria Clara Castellões de Oliveira, a joint international research and publication project ‘Brazil and its Translators’, on the cultural impact of the continuity, intensity and pervasiveness of the phenomenon of the Brazilian creative writer cum translator of literary texts. Eduardo Luís Araújo Batista (Research Assistant at Queen Mary, funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Education) has focused on the asymmetry of the reverse trajectory with a focus on Sir Richard Burton. The project is co-funded by the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil.

International Symposium

• Rio de Janeiro (28-7 to 04-08-2006). Trocas e transferências literárias e culturais: representações do exílio e da migração, co-organized with Dr. Omar García and Dr. Parvati Nair.

Sample article

• 'Sem Terra/ Desterrados: The Music of Dissent of the MST in Dialogue with the Tango Culture' (in Image and Narrative, the Online Magazine of Visual Narrative, Issue 10: The Visualization of the Subaltern in World Music. On Musical Contestation and Strategies, March 2005).

Sample conference lecture

• 'Enhancing Cultural Studies through the Web Mode of Organization and Publication of Archives' (Abstract; text under construction)

Sample feature article

• ‘Crying out for land’. (In HERO - Higher Education & Research Opportunities in the United Kingdom, February 2003).

Sample review of work

• Peer Review of Vozes sem terra by Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching.

Archives and anthologies compiled and edited by Else R P Vieira

• The Drawings of the Landless Children (MST)
• The Compositions of the Landless children (MST)
• The Poetry of the Militant Culture of the MST
• The Music of the Militant Culture of the MST
• The Lyrics of the Militant Culture of the MST
• The Films of the Militant Culture of the MST
• The Photograhy of the MST
• Essays by MST Militants
• Statements by Brazilian Intellectuals and Artists on the MST
• Academic studies on the MST
• Films about the MST
• The Terra Photographs of Sebastião Salgado
• Glossary on the MST, landlessness, and related topics (77 entries)

Some recently organized international conferences

• I CONGRESSO OS BRASILEIROS NO MUNDO
• Race and Gender in Brazilian Literature. Conference Report (University of Oxford, Centre for Brazilian Studies, 1999).
• On Transcreation: Literary Invention, Translation and Culture (In Honour of Haroldo de Campos). Conference Report (University of Oxford, Centre for Brazilian Studies and Yale University, 2000).
• Landless Voices Colloquium (University of Nottingham, 20-22 September 2001, co-organized by Else R P Vieira and Bernard McGuirk).
• Exile and Migration from/to Portuguese–Speaking Countries (Institute of Romance Studies and Queen Mary, University of London, November 2004).

Reports

• Project Report: A interface entre os Estudos Críticos e Culturais: Relatório Final do Projeto Integrado entre a UFMG e a Universidade de Nottingham em rede com a UFF e a Universidade de Londres, patrocinado pela CAPES e Conselho Britânico 1994-1999.

<< Return to staff list