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The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world, home to almost half of the world’s living species and hundreds of indigenous cultures. From the time when the first Europeans sailed the waters of the Amazon river, the region has also captivated the imagination of travelers, businessmen, scientists, writers, and artists from other regions. With the independence of Brazil in the 19th century, the Amazon became the subject of frontier disputes, often playing a contradictory role in the new nation’s quest for identity: it was the “savage”, “uncivilized” territory that brought both shame and pride to nationalist discourses of all ideologies, which alternated between calling it an “earthly paradise”, and “green hell”. This course will examine how the Amazon is portrayed in a variety of media and genres: indigenous narratives, travel-writing, literature, and film. 

• To introduce students to a selection of narratives that address local, national, regional and transnational identities within the Amazonian region
• To develop an awareness of how culture can explore, engage with and question pressing issues within Amazonian cultures and societies
• To explore how different narrative forms, both prose and graphic, shape the way that we read texts 

Lectures

Group work in class

Active participation in seminar discussion

3 individual tutorials with MA students to discuss essay plan 

• Have a better understanding of the history of the Amazon region.
• Have a better knowledge about the Amazonian environment.
• Have a better understanding of social conflicts the Amazonian region.
• Have a better understanding of how different discourses about the Amazon have been constructed.
• Have a better understanding of Amazonian indigenous cultures 

• Display cultural analytical skills (literary analysis, film analysis, and analysis of colonial and ecological history).
• Evaluate the key issues at stake within debates about regional, transnational and global identities
• Carry out formal analysis of prose and graphic novels
• Synthesise and evaluate diverse arguments and readings of the texts studied

• Read, understand and discuss literary and visual texts
• Apply theory to specific texts
• Present ideas effectively in written and oral forms 

• Demonstrate independent and critical thinking
• Demonstrate independent research skills
• Demonstrate ability to present material and ideas in oral and written form.
• An ability to participate in group discussions
• An ability to participate in internet discussions 

Re-sit assessment

Oral and written feedback on the essay plan

Written feedback on final essay

Individual consultations with teaching staff during office hours or by appointment. 
 

• Hecht, Susana, and Alexander Cockburn. The Fate of the Forest. Developers, Destroyers, and Defenders of the Amazon. Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 2011.
• Slater, Candace. Entangled Edens: Visions of the Amazon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.