The IEM – Institute of Medieval Studies and the IHC – Institute of Contemporary History, both research units of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, NOVA University are combining to organise the seminar “Portugal as Brazil’s medieval past. The cultural and political contexts of tropical Portuguese medievalism”.

Bringing together a diverse group of researchers, from medievalists to contemporary specialists, Portuguese, Brazilian and American in nationality, including some of the greatest specialists in the topics under study, the seminar aims to open a first space for academic discussion in Portugal, about the uses of the Middle Ages in the construction of Luso-Brazilian identity(ies) in the second half of the twentieth century. The wider cultural and political context of Luso-tropicalimo correspondingly represent the core focus but other facets are also for study, such as the vision of the 1383/85 dynastic crisis as a bourgeois revolution originating a “modern” Brazil, or on the contrary – how a heavy heritage of archaic, medieval, religious and traditionalist colonisation may have contributed to the difficulties of modern Brazil.

Program (Free entrance)

9h30

  • Maria de Lurdes Rosa (IEM-NOVA FCSH): “O medievalismo como campo historiográfico”;
  • Pedro Martins (IHC-NOVA FCSH): “Antes do luso-tropicalismo: representações da Idade Média nas comemorações históricas em Portugal (1894-1947)”;
  • Sérgio Campos Matos (Centro de História/FLUL): “Raízes do luso-tropicalismo na cultura histórica portuguesa”.

10h30 Debate

11h Break

11h15

  • Cláudia Castelo (CIUHCT/FCUL): “A herança medieval no luso-tropicalismo”;
  • Nadia Altschul (Universidade de Glasgow): “Gilberto Freyre e al-Andalus”.

12h15 Debate

13h Lunch

14h30

  • Mário Jorge da Motta Bastos (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Translatio Studii e NIEP-Marx-PréK): “O Feudalismo (português) como força motora do fenómeno colonial (brasileiro)? Revisitando um famoso debate”;
  • Miguel Metelo Seixas (IEM-NOVA FCSH e Universidade Lusíada): “Neomedievalismos heráldicos na formação do nacionalismo brasileiro”;
  • Nuno Ivo (IEM-NOVA FCSH): “T(r)ópicos medievais no cinema de Glauber Rocha”.

16h Debate

16h30 Conclusions by Hilario Franco Jr. (USP)

Organisation: IEM-NOVA FCSH; IHC-NOVA FCSH
Organisers: Maria de Lurdes Rosa (IEM-NOVA FCSH), Pedro Martins (IHC-NOVA FCSH), Nadia Altschul (Glasgow Univ.)