PORT 3210 - [Reading Rio]

(HA-AS, ALC-AS, SCD-AS) (EC-LASP)

Fall. Not offered: 2021-2022. Next offered: 2023-2024. 4 credits. Student option grading.

P. Erber.

From white sand beaches, samba, and carnival, to poverty, violence, and urban chaos, few cities offer so much to the imagination as Rio de Janeiro. From the early nineteenth century to the present Rio has been the backdrop, object, birthplace, and protagonist of countless novels, movies, songs, and sociological studies. In this course we turn to the city as text and explore the multiple possibilities of a hermeneutics of urban space. Shifting the focus of cultural analysis from the national to the urban, this course approaches the multiple images and complex reality of Rio from a broad range of perspectives and fields of inquiry through a wide range of materials including historical documents and narratives, literary works, theoretical pieces, films, and numerous online tools.