The Department of Spanish and Portuguese has joined forces with colleagues on two other continents to examine Amazonia, a land of such lushness and diversity that it left early visitors speechless.

“Amazonia: Writers, Travelers and Its People,” set for Monday and Tuesday, May 12-13, in Olson Hall, will trace early scientific descriptions and fictional representations of the vast Amazon River basin in South America, how later generations of writers mined the early descriptions, and how perceptions and interpretations have evolved since the 1850s.  

The symposium is a partnership between UC Davis and FAPESP (the São Paulo Research Foundation, Brazil), and organized by Leopoldo Bernucci, a UC Davis professor in Spanish and Portuguese.

Along with scholars from UC Berkeley, UCLA, Brazil and France, the UC Davis departments of History and Native American studies will also be represented.

FAPESP most often funds science projects, but with a new initiative put forth by Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, the foundation wanted to form new partnerships in the humanities and social sciences, Bernucci said.

“They are really reaching out on this project,” he said. “My present research is on narratives about Amazonia by European, and North and South American travelers and fiction writers.”

Bernucci has been working with colleagues from the Federal University of Pará (Belém, Brazil) since 2005 and with colleagues from the Université la Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 since 2012 on topics dealing with the representation of Amazonia. Last year marked the start of a similar collaboration with a group of three scholars from UNICAMP (University of Campinas, Brazil).

“This is an opportunity to bring together a wide range of people addressing the narratives of Amazonia in many ways,” he said.

Next week’s symposium will explore the rich history of writing about the region — which covers about 3 million square miles of portions of Brazil, Peru, Columbia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia — from the 1850s onward. Explorers in the 19th century described it with a sense of awe and with a reverence for the natural wonders and the indigenous people.

“They were so overwhelmed at times they were struck speechless,” Bernucci said. “They had no words to describe it.”

Some were also the first eyewitnesses of human rights abuses committed against the Indians. This darker side will be considered in a presentation by Bernucci about crimes against humanity committed in the rubber estates from around 1880 to 1915 when many Indians were enslaved, tortured and murdered.

FAPESP will continue to collaborate with UC Davis this fall with a two-day conference this fall on the Davis campus, bringing together sciences and humanities.

The symposium website.

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