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Jack Draper |
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<< back to Faculty PhD, Duke University, 2005 Dr. Draper's general field of research is Latin American Cultural Studies and he specializes in Brazilian literature, music, and popular culture. His dissertation, currently under revision for publication, is entitled Redemptive Regionalism from the Brazilian Northeast: Forró, Migration and the Flows of Popular Culture in a Global Economy. This work explores the history of a popular musical genre in Brazil, and through lyrical and regional cultural analysis, draws larger conclusions about the significance of regional popular culture in rethinking Brazilian national identity and developing a regionalist identity both in the Northeast and in the diaspora of Northeasterners elsewhere in the country. The study also places regional popular music in an international context, exploring how Brazilian music has historically been received abroad only through the mediation of cultural ambassadors, to the exclusion of many regional genres. Dr. Draper recently published an essay entitled “Renovation and Conservation in Brazilian Literature and Music” in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies (17(2); 2008). This paper develops a theory of the socio-political implications of some of the major tendencies in Brazilian art over the past century. In 2007 he authored an introduction to the book “What is Forró?”, forthcoming with Brasiliense Press. Some of his recent conference presentations include a paper at the Latin American Studies Association Congress in June 2009 entitled "Critical Nostalgia in the Northeastern Brazilian Diaspora: Forró’s Redemptive Regionalism,” and “Andrucha Waddington Meets Luiz Gonzaga: Nature, Gender and Sexuality in Brazilian Cinema and Popular Music” at the Brazilian Studies Association conference in March 2008. Concurrently with further research on Northeastern Brazilian popular culture, Dr. Draper is also working on a project analyzing Brazilian representations of saudade (a Portuguese word for a structure of feeling combining nostalgia, remembrance, and longing as well as grief). Dr. Draper’s current research explores the intellectual history developed around saudade from medieval Portugal to present-day Brazil, and utilizes a critical look at this history to contextualize and analyze the ideology and psychology of saudade in the elite and popular literary, musical and filmic production of Brazil. Dr. Draper is the Portuguese Language Coordinator of the Romance Languages and Literatures Department and has recently developed the Minor in Luso-Brazilian Area Studies (link opens new window) for undergraduates desiring a focus on Luso-Brazilian cultures and/or peoples in their coursework. Potential minors should feel free to contact him for further information. Dr. Draper also co-chairs the department's Faculty and Graduate Student Seminar Series. |
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copyright © 2004 Curators of the University of Missouri last update: 13-November-2009 Department of Romance Languages & Literatures . College of Arts & Science . University of Missouri
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