COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course will provide students with an experience-rich overview of: 1) Brazil’s history and culture; 2) the complex challenges of development and conservation facing the people of Brazil; 3) basic rainforest ecology and; 4) an introduction to the human ecology of the Amazon. Students will travel through Brazil to Salvador and Manaus, the Xixuau-Xiparina Reserve in the Amazon, and Rio de Janeiro, engaging in discussions, lectures, reflective writing, and sustainable practices service work. Students will be encouraged to think critically and creatively about the challenges facing the people of the Amazon and facing Brazilians more generally. The course also has a strong cultural anthropology component; in immersing themselves in Brazilian culture, students will be invited to think critically about their own culture in new ways.
“Madeline came home with an awareness for new experiences, new challenges, and of course new friend and great memories!” — Carol and John Taggart, Skippack, PA
COURSE OBJECTIVES
- Basic Brazilian history, and how Brazil’s unique culture and race relations developed out of this history
- Key features of Brazilian culture
- Key political conflicts over land, conservation, and development in Brazil
- The history of the Xixuau-Xiparina reserve
- Debates over sustainable development
- The relationships between indigenous and other “traditional people” and sustainable development
- Principal factors in the protection and devastation of the Amazon
- Basic Rainforest Ecology
LECTURE TOPICS
- An Introduction to Brazil
- Culture, Music, and Religion in Brazil
- Wealth, Poverty, and Sustainable Development in Brazil
- Amazonian Geography and Ecology
- Indigenous and Traditional People and the Politics of the Environment in the Amazon
- Wildlife and Ecology in the Amazon
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