Books in the Reconfiguring Identities in the Portuguese-speaking World series

This volume maps the reception of New Portuguese Letters in Portugal and abroad, with a mainly feminist approach. The ban on the book, deemed scandalous, and trial of the authors found instant international support abroad. An invaluable contribution to the history of women, the book is still relevant today for its insights on equality and freedom.

«A pioneering first in the English language. This is a wonderfully subtle, multifaceted study of the image in the work of one of Portugal¿s greatest writers. Admirable for its depth of analysis and breadth of coverage, this is a real gift for new learners of Portuguese and established scholars alike.»(Hilary Owen, University of Oxford)«The present collection of essays, produced by some of the best scholars who have dealt with Lídia Jorge¿s work, should be of great help to English readers not familiar with the original language of a compelling, engaging writer deeply concerned with the world she lives in and the future of us all.»(Onésimo Teotónio Almeida, Brown University)As Aristotle has written, the image is at the core of the soul¿s language. Indeed, given its significant potential and capacity for revelation ¿ heightened in a society dominated by visual culture ¿ the image would seem to be key to reflecting, critically and creatively, on humanity and on history itself. Lídia Jorge has asserted several times that her writing has always taken as its starting point a powerful and inspiring image, which concentrates the various meanings and reflections that she intends to explore while also dispersing these across her texts. Radiating from the initial image, Jorge manages to develop a gaze which is simultaneously critical, thorough and informative. Scholars point out that whenever language opens to universal images and mythologies capable of conveying visions of clarity, the subversive power of beauty is re-asserted. This power is confirmed and examined from different points of view and theories in this volume.

In The Worlds of Mia Couto a diverse group of literary experts sets out to explore Mia Couto's oeuvre in relation not only to the imaginary worlds created by the author but also to the complex geographical, cultural and literary contexts that are woven into the texture of his work.

This volume investigates literary and cinematographic narratives from Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Sao Tome and Principe, analysing the different ways in which social and cultural experience is represented in postcolonial contexts. It continues and completes the exploration of the postcolonial imaginary and identity of Portuguese-speaking Africa presented in the earlier volume Narrating the Postcolonial Nation: Mapping Angola and Mozambique (2014). Memory, history, migration and diaspora are core notions in the recreation and reconceptualization of the nation and its identities in Capeverdian, Guinean and Saotomean literary and cinematographic culture. Acknowledging that the idea of the postcolonial nation intersects with other social, political, cultural and historical categories, this book scrutinizes written and visual representations of the nation from a wide range of inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives, including literary and film studies, gender studies, sociology, and post-colonial and cultural studies. It makes a valuable contribution to current debates on postcolonialism, nation and identity in these former Portuguese colonies.

This volume sets out to investigate queer literature and cinema, exploring in particular the intersection of issues of gender and Lusophone culture. The essays collected here present individual case studies within a queer theoretical framework, examining the ways in which queer identities are constructed and addressed through different types of cultural production. More specifically, they consider Portuguese and Lusophone socio-cultural contexts and the representation of gender in popular culture, as well as the centrality of literature and cinema in the subversion of heteronormative social norms.

Over the centuries, Portugal has been shaped by waves of occupation and religious transformation. This book explores texts dating from the eighteenth century to the present in which the encounter between Paganism, Judaism and Islam, on the one hand, and the Christian status quo, on the other, illustrates the former's resistance to absolute erasure.

These essays explore literary and cultural representations of urban settings originating from the Island of Mozambique, Lisbon, Luanda, Macau, Maputo, Porto Alegre and Sao Paulo. They examine how memories and identities are framed, how people at the margins express resistance and how migration disrupts established social and cultural borders.

Mario de Sa-Carneiro's legacy is a rich corpus of inventive, playful, even daring texts. This first English collection dedicated to his work brings together scholars from Portugal, Brazil, and the USA to delve into the complexities and paradoxes of his work, placing it in a wider literary and artistic context.

This book studies the uses and effects of utopian visions on history, literature and culture of the Portuguese-speaking countries; topics include national identity, political strategies, missionary doctrine and literary figures from Camoes to Jose Saramago.

The fortieth anniversary of the independence of the African countries colonized by Portugal presents a valuable opportunity to reassess how colonialism has been «imagined» through the medium of the moving image. The essays collected in this volume investigate Portuguese colonialism and its filmic and audio-visual imaginaries both during and after the Estado Novo regime, examining political propaganda films shot during the liberation wars and exploring the questions and debates these generate. The book also highlights common aspects in the emergence of a national cinema in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. By reanimating (and decolonizing) the archive, it represents an important contribution to Portuguese colonial history, as well as to the history of cinema and the visual arts.

Drawing on the theoretical work of Graham Huggan and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, this study discusses the political significance of this neglect by focusing on the asymmetrical positions occupied by two widely acclaimed Lusophone women writers, Paulina Chiziane of Mozambique and Lidia Jorge of Portugal.

This book looks at the way that Mozambican and Angolan literary works seek to narrate, re-create and make sense of the postcolonial nation, via three broad themes: the role of history; the recurring image of the voyage; and discursive/narrative strategies. A final section considers the postcolonial in a broader Lusophone and international context.

This volume brings together interviews on the topic of the postcolonial nation with prominent writers from Angola and Mozambique: Luandino Vieira, Ana Paula Tavares, Boaventura Cardoso, Jose Eduardo Agualusa, Ondjaki and Pepetela, Joao Paulo Borges Coelho, Marcelo Panguana, Mia Couto, Paulina Chiziane, Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa, Luis Carlos Patraquim.