Lisbon Stories: Migration, Community and Intercultural Relations in Contemporary Cinema and Literature

  • Fernando Arenas University of Michigan
Keywords: Portugal, cinema, novel, Walter Salles, Luiz Ruffato, Sérgio Tréfaut

Abstract

This essay focuses on immigration in contemporary Portugal and social phenomena related to community, intercultural relations, and citizenship as represented in acclaimed cinematic and literary texts. The objects of analysis are the Brazilian film Terra estrangeira (1996) by directors Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, the Brazilian novel Estive em Lisboa e lembrei de você (2009) by Luiz Ruffato, and the Portuguese film Viagem a Portugal (2011) by Sérgio Tréfaut.

Author Biography

Fernando Arenas, University of Michigan
Fernando Arenas is professor of Lusophone African, Brazilian, and Portuguese Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His teaching and research focus on film, literature, and popular music, which he studies through an interdisciplinary and theoretical prism centering on the triad of post-colonialism, migrations, and globalization. He is the author of Lusophone Africa: Beyond Independence (Minnesota, 2011) and Utopias of Otherness: Nationhood and Subjectivity in Portugal and Brazil (Minnesota, 2003). He also co-edited, with Susan C. Quinlan, Lusosex: Gender and Sexuality in the Portuguese-Speaking World (Minnesota, 2002). His current research focuses on migratory flows in the Portuguese-speaking world and issues related to interculturality, community, and citizenship.
Published
2017-06-03