Beyond Feathers: Visualizing Brazil in Early Modern Europe

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This session brings together an interdisciplinary, international group of scholars to explore one dimension of the Congress’s overarching theme, “Latin American Studies in a Globalized World,” by examining how printed images shaped the perception of Brazilian people, plants, and animals among Europeans during the “first global age” beginning in the sixteenth century. Three papers by an art historian, anthropologist, and literary scholar look beyond the famous Tupinambá “feather costume” that circulated widely in European print culture, to address other ways that Brazil was imagined and represented visually, and to investigate the reproduction, use, and impact of those representations.

Sub Track

• Europe And Latin America

Session Organizers

• Lisa B Voigt, Ohio State University

• Mariana C Françozo, Leiden University

Chair

• Rebecca Brienen, Oklahoma state university

Discussant

• Surekha Davies, Western Connecticut State University

Individual Presentations

• Tupinambás between Europe and the “New World”: Imagining violence in times of war - Maria Berbara, State University of Rio de Janeiro

• Thevet’s sloths and Léry’s demons - Lisa B Voigt, Ohio State University

• Dutch depictions of Brazilian animals: Between narratives of curiosity and descriptions of natural history - Mariana C Françozo, Leiden University