Spring 2023
IAS 3353: Modern Brazil
This course, taught by CIS Professor Fabio de Sa e Silva, explores changes and continuities in Brazil’s economic, social, and political development from 1988, when Brazil adopted a new constitution, to 2018, when a former Army captain with a history of contempt for democracy and hostility toward women and minorities was elected to the presidency.
The course is designed to be a fun exploration of recent Brazilian dilemmas. In this spirit, in addition to traditional readings and lectures, students listen to Brazilian music; watch and discuss Brazilian movies; and engage in highly interactive activities. Fabio’s goal is to provide them with a wide range of opportunities to not just learn about Brazil, but also feel what it is like to be part of the Brazilian polity from 1988–2018.
Fabio also adopts an innovative teaching approach. In the main course assignment, he asks students to develop a “fictitious character,” whose viewpoint they will adopt throughout the course to evaluate Brazilian developments in the 1988–2018 timeframe. Throughout the semester, “characters” write letters reflecting on how the changes Brazil is undergoing are impacting their lives. By the end of the semester, when the class is approaching the 2018 elections, the “characters” must state and justify their vote in the contest between Bolsonaro and Fernando Haddad. Those letters and statements are presented and discussed in class.
Students find this assignment incredibly useful to navigate a foreign context in a meaningful and independent way, and many write, in course evaluations or unsolicited communications, that it makes the course one of the best they ever took at OU. For example, while praising Fabio for teaching him to “think for himself”, John Foster, who took this course in 2019, wrote that:
I enrolled because and after a friend informed me that he just had. But aside from selecting my major and perhaps one or two other more minor choices, this decision was the best of my undergraduate career and gave voice to what I have come to learn as a key goal of the entire institution: to change lives.
Similarly, Benjamin Bottger, who took the course in 2020, wrote, about the “character” assignment, that:
This assignment allowed me to develop an objective understanding of Brazil’s recent decades and develop a sense of the phenomenology of living through the different periods. Because of this pedagogical choice, I have an emotional understanding of Brazil’s history in a way that I do not for other countries that I have studied. I have never had an assignment like this in any other class.
Questions? Contact undergraduate advisor Malin Collins at malin@ou.edu.
