The Ball and the Blackboard
As an undergraduate, I had a Classics professor who sometimes spoke of the humanities’ task as the search for the strange in the familiar, and the familiar in the strange. The idea stuck with me…
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Author: Bruno Carvalho
A Tale of Three Buildings
Greek columns, in Thomas Jefferson’s designs for the University of Virginia, might evoke democracy. In Albert Speer’s designs for Berlin during the Third Reich, similar columns serve to…
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Edifício Master: One View
Some movies seem to travel better than others. From the point of view of teaching a class on Brazilian cinema in a U.S. university to students with a wide range of backgrounds, it is never clear how they will interpret the tone of a scene or what jokes and references will get lost in translation…
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Review of Brazil through the eyes of William James: Letters, Diaries, and Drawings, (1865-1866)
William James’s journey to Brazil puts him in the company of other eminent “New Englanders” whose time there would prove to be life changing, like Teddy Roosevelt (who was born in New York City …
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