Research
Research Project
LINGUISTIC STUDIES
Ph.D.. ADRIANA DA SILVA
METADISCOURSE, REFERENCING, AND ARGUMENTATION IN ACADEMIC, JOURNALISTIC AND DIGITAL GENRES. (2015 – current). Undergraduate: (2) / Academic Master Degree: (3) / IC/ CNPq Scholarship: (1) / CAPES MS Scholarship: (1). The objective of this work is to make the metadiscursive analysis of different genres produced in the academic sphere and also in social networks. We propose to answer how authors of different academic genres, or not, construct their positions in their textual productions. As a delimitation of this central objective, this research seeks to accomplish the following specific objectives: 1. Select different academic and social media genres; 2. Identify the formal aspects (structure, number of words, most used words) of these genres; 3. Use Hyland’s metadiscourse model to identify and quantify the categories presented in these textual productions; 4. Map the metadiscursive operators used by the authors, that is, verify the textual materialization of the author’s intentions and interactions with his reader; 5. Identify possible gaps and highlight the positive aspects of the metadiscursive choices presented in the texts; 6. Associate the metadiscourse theory with that of social representations.
Ph.D.. ANA LUISA BORBA GEDIEL
ICTs AND ACTIVE METHODOLOGIES AS MEDIATORS IN THE PROCESS OF TEACHING AND LEARNING OF BRAZILIAN SIGN LANGUAGE (LIBRAS) OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION OF DEAF IN HIGHER EDUCATION. From Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), a set of elements for interaction with symbols, images, documents, words, and videos are made available in the virtual environment as teaching materials. The educational space becomes a favorable environment for critical reflection since it enables the articulation of the information made available through ICTs in a systematized and integrated way. In this perspective, the research project aims to investigate the different forms of comprehensiveness of Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS teaching and learning in Higher Education, mediated by ICTs and involving active methodologies. Thus, the research encompasses the process of initial and continuing training of teachers who are learning LIBRAS – as a second language – as a mean of communication and didactic constitution for acting in the classroom; and the identification of the production of didactic material for deaf students who will benefit from those teaching activities as their first language. Besides this, we are interested in studying the practice of teachers who have encountered deaf students in Higher Education to understand how the process of interaction mediated by the use of ICTs occurs. The methodological approach combined with qualitative research, through an ethnographic and ethnomethodological approach, aimed at the identification, mapping, and verification of teaching and learning activities and interaction involving LIBRAS in a Federal University located in ‘Zona da Mata Mineira’. This subject is considered of current relevance in the field of Applied Linguistics and corroborates with theoretical and empirical questions about teacher training and language teaching and learning, focusing on teacher training and teaching and learning of LIBRAS.
Ph.D.. ANA MARIA FERREIRA BARCELOS
TEACHING AND LEARNING FOREIGN LANGUAGES EXPERIENCED BY STUDENTS AND PRE-SERVICE AND IN-SERVICE TEACHERS: THE RELATIONS AMONG BELIEFS, EMOTIONS, AND IDENTITY. (2014 –current). Undergraduate: (2) / Academic Master Degree: (3) / IC CNPq Scholarship: (1) FAPEMIG Scholarship: (1) / CAPES MS Scholarship: (1). The overall objective of this project is language teaching from an emic perspective, that is, from the way it is experienced by teachers and learners (English, Spanish and other languages). More specifically, the project aims to investigate what learners and also pre- and in-service English teachers believe and/or feel about their current language teaching/learning practices and how these beliefs and emotions relate to their identity, motivation, and also inserted in the context of language public policies in Brazil. This project seeks to map and understand the beliefs, emotions, identity and motivation of learners and teachers in their practices. Several instruments to collect data will be used, like written and visual narratives, open-ended questionnaires, interviews, class observation, and also focal groups for a deeper understanding of the relations between beliefs and emotions, and their interrelation with key constructs in Applied Linguistics, as identities, motivation, public policies, among others.
BELIEFS, IDENTITIES, AND EMOTIONS IN NARRATIVES OF LANGUAGE TEACHERS (PRE-SERVICE). (2010-2011). Undergraduate: (1) / IC/ FAPEMIG Scholarship: (1).This project aims to investigate, through written and oral narratives, the beliefs about English teaching and learning, emotions and the process of constructing the identities of teachers in graduation in a course of Languages. In order to achieve these objectives, the following specific objectives have been established: 1. Identify the beliefs of English teachers in training regarding language and language teaching and learning through their written narratives and interviews; 2. Identify the emotions present in the written narratives of English teachers in training regarding language and language teaching and learning through narratives and interviews; 3. Investigate how to construct the identities of the pre-service teacher by analyzing their beliefs and emotions in their written narratives and interviews. 4. Assist future teachers in reflecting on their beliefs, emotions, and the process of building identities and on the process of teaching and learning English through discussions based on their narratives.
Ph.D.. APARECIDA DE ARAÚJO OLIVEIRA
DIFFERENT GRAMMARS AND THEIR ROLE IN THE L2 ACQUISITION (2017- current). Undergraduate: (1) PIBIC FAPEMIG. The grammar of languages varies according to conception of the world of each people, and different languages may offer distinct morphosyntactic resources to express similar objects and events. The assumption is that the grammar of a mother tongue may favor or hinder the acquisition of a second or third language, through transference or interference, and the knowledge of these aspects brings subsidies for the teaching of an L2. This project aims to investigate, through subprojects, aspects of the interlanguage in which L1 grammar influences the acquisition of several aspects of Portuguese and English as a foreign language, investigated preferably under the cognitive linguistics perspective. Regarding other aspects, we highlight: strategies for the expression of temporality (Bardovi-Harlig, 2000) and verbal aspect; narrative structure; figure and background in narrative, expression of movement in the talmyian typology (Talmy, 2000). Interlanguage research methodology involves the collection of data on the use of foreign language by apprentices and subsequent analysis taking into account the mother tongue and the target language.
Ph.D.. CRISTIANE CATALDI DOS SANTOS PAES
SOCIAL INTEGRATION OF KNOWLEDGE AS A DISCURSIVE PRACTICE. (2016 – current). Academic Master Degree: (2)/ CAPES MS Scholarship: (1). Since the eighties, there has been a significant expansion of scientific communication on the national and international scene, as science and technology are increasingly present in the life of any citizen, whether setting up new habits or lifestyles. Faced with a constant need for training and information, the scientific community must be aware of the importance of providing significant and relevant scientific knowledge to the public, providing a dynamic and intense dialogue between scientists and citizens. Calsamiglia (1997) points out two channels responsible for the transmission of knowledge: one would be the institutional, corresponding to educational institutions (primary, secondary and higher), and has the social function of organizing, transmitting and evaluating the specific knowledge of each course; the other would be the media, which, since it is open access, does not imply an evaluation and is generally related to current events. Considering this communicative reality, this research project has the objective of analyzing how the recontextualization process of scientific information disseminated in print and online media occurs, as well as in other areas such as academic and legal. We intend to understand how the process of selection of information on science occurs and which linguistic-discursive procedures and informative strategies are used by journalists to transform this knowledge into news for the general public. It is important to highlight that the process of recontextualizing scientific knowledge is characterized by re-creating this type of knowledge for each audience. Therefore, the disseminating task not only requires the elaboration of a discursive form appropriate to the new circumstances, but it also entails the reconstruction and re-creation of the same knowledge for a different public. According to this conception, the dissemination of science is focused from an essentially discursive perspective when considering the structure, organization and textual reformulation, the lexical-semantic specificities, the enunciative and rhetorical particularities, among others, that show the dynamics of the recontextualization of scientific discourse into informational discourse. The activity of disseminating information of a scientific character presents itself from a variety of informational strategies that comprise a wide spectrum that goes from the definition, in one hand, to the metaphor of the other, passing through the explanatory apposition, paraphrase, denomination, exemplification, comparison, analogy, among others. Each discursive procedure contributes in a specific way to the representation and diffusion of scientific information. The main theoretical premisses concerning the Discourse Analysis of Scientific Communication (CALSAMIGLIA, BONILLA, CASSANY, LÓPEZ and MARTÍ, 2001, CALSAMIGLIA, 1997, 2003, 2011, CALSAMIGLIA and LÓPEZ, 2003, CALSAMIGLIA and VAN DIJK, 2004, CATALDI, 2003, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014; CIAPUSCIO, 1997, 2003; LÓPEZ, 2011; VAN DIJK, 2011), the research developed in this context considers the linguistic-discursive specificities that characterize the dissemination of scientific knowledge. In this way, what is proposed in this scope of linguistic knowledge analysis is to study how each scientific knowledge is recontextualized for the reading public and which informative strategies are used in the transformation of scientific knowledge into general knowledge
Ph.D.. HILDA SIMONE HENRIQUES COELHO
MULTIMODAL NARRATIVES, IDENTITY AND SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF LANGUAGE EDUCATION AND LANGUAGE LEARNING. (2015 – current). Graduation: (2) / Academic Master (1). The research I seek to develop within the The research project aims to observe and study the semiotic processes of the construction of meaning (HALLIDAY, 1978; CAZDEN et al., 1996) in language teaching and learning, particularly in the context of teacher education. We investigate how the experiences of students and teachers are characterized through multimodal narratives, making use of the Social Semiotics / Multimodalities Theory (KRESS and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2006, 2001), The Grammar of Visual Design (VAN LEEUWEN & JEWITT, 2004), and the Social Representations (MOSCOVICI, 2013). Narrative analysis (including GVD categories) enables particular interpretations of experiences and social representations, thus revealing the (re) construction of identity (s) of students and teachers. In dealing with identity, this research is based on the studies of Norton (2000, 2013), whose definition points to “the individual’s understanding of their relationship with the world, how this relationship is structured through time and space, and how she/he understands his future possibilities ” (p.36). We also use the investment model of Darvin & Norton (2015), perceived as the intersection between identity, ideology and capital. This model assists the understanding of the relationship between identity, investment and imagined communities, themes identified throughout the research carried out within the scope of this project. Complementing the theoretical contributions to data analysis, the concept of social representation (MOSCOVICI, 2013), considered a “hybrid concept” (GRACIA, 1998) for articulating concepts of sociology and psychology, serves as an anchor to identify and understand the experiences of students and teachers in relation to the process of teaching and learning of languages, since “it has as function the elaboration of behaviors and the communication between individuals” (MOSCOVICI, 2013, p.26). This research project has implications for language teaching in different contexts and for the teacher’s education.
Ph.D.. IDALENA OLIVEIRA CHAVES
PORTUGUESE AS ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE AND HERITAGE LANGUAGES: TEACHING, RESEARCH, AND TEACHER TRAINING. The diverse and multicultural context in which the teaching of Portuguese language spoken in Brazil is developed, in today’s society, requires teachers and researchers to reflect about a more effective way to train teachers and keep up with the needs of students of Portuguese as a non-mother tongue. In this perspective, the objective of this project is to investigate Brazilian Portuguese as an Additional Language (henceforth PAL), that is, Portuguese teaching and learning for speakers who have another mother tongue, such as deaf, foreign, indigenous, etc., and have the challenge of adding another language to their linguistic inventory. In addition, we propose the investigation of Heritage Language (HL), understood here, according to Flores and Melo-Pfeifer (2014), as a language which is part of the linguistic family repertoire of a speaker who lives in a community whose spoken language is not that of his parents. This is stated in Viçosa by the arrival of foreign professors and students with children at school age who are enrolled in local schools, living day to day with a language that is not spoken at home with family members. The same happens, also, abroad with children from Brazilian parents, who now have Portuguese as their heritage language (PHL). Facing these two demands, this project also contemplates the training of teachers to work with PAL teaching.
Ph.D.. MARIA CARMEN AIRES GOMES
BODY, DIFFERENCE AND SOCIAL VULNERABILITY: DISCURSIVE-CRITICAL- EXPLANATORY STUDIES OF LIFE AND MEDIATIC NARRATIVES (2015 – current). Undergraduate: (1) / Academic Master Degree: (3) / Doctorate Degree: (2) CAPES MS Scholarship: (2).The purpose of this project is to reflect on the relationship among body, media and difference. The relationship between body and media has provoked several discussions over the centuries both in social sciences as well as in the medical field, and even in social communication studies, about the influence of the media in the body constitution. We will discuss here how bodies are constructed, portrayed and represented in Brazilian printed and televised media. In this research, we will focus on the construction and representation of the different body, the one that deviates from the hegemonic normative standards. Journalistic articles from “Veja”, “Época” and “Isto é” magazines will be collected from January, 2011 to December, 2011, in addition to media narratives, to the composition of a documental corpus that deals with the issue of the different body. The premises of Critical Discourse Studies (Norman Fairclough, 2001, 1999, 2003), Systemic-Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 2004; Theo van Leeuwen, 1997, 2008) will be used, based on a combination of theoretical and methodological tools of studies on Language Assessment and Perspective (Peter White, 2004) and Corpus Linguistics (Tony Beber Sardinha, 2004).
Ph.D.. MARIANA RAMALHO PROCÓPIO XAVIER
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SELF IN DIFFERENT MEDIA GENRES: AN ANALYSIS OF LIFE NARRATIVES. (2015 – current). Undergraduate: (2) / Academic Master’s Degree (1) / CAPES MS Scholarship (1).The objective of this project is to reflect on the relations between the media and the discursive construction of oneself, especially from the increasing and constant appearance of life narratives in the most varied media genres. Our focus is to observe empirical occurrences of the emergence of life narratives (of oneself and others) in the different configurations of the media discourse – journalistic, publicity, film, entertainment – in order to analyze in what way the discursive organization of such situations happens. Such empirical occurrences can appear even in genres that are not, a priori, linked to a biographical label. Our research is in line with the notion of biographical space, developed by the Argentinian linguist Leonor Arfuch (2010), according to whom we are facing a time when a biographical horizon is presented, not respecting generic boundaries or previously foreseen visions. We intended to carry out a kind of cartography of life narrative in the contemporary media, observing to what extent the process of mediatization restructures and transforms the diverse practices of the narrative of oneself and others and, at the same time, how these practices interfere and modify traditional media genres.
(RE)FORMULATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA PRACTICE: ANALYSIS OF SOCIETY AND LANGUAGE. (2016 – current). Undergraduate: (1) / Academic Master Degree (1).This project aims to focus on the media, regarding the (re) configurations of the process (es) of production, reception, and circulation of the meanings that permeate the various media practices in their different materialities. The objective is to analyze how these processes are organized, in a context of mediatizated society, that is, of social interactions and dynamics linked and altered by the most varied communicational devices. Thus, we are interested in developing studies about the discursive genres present in the media, the processes of identity construction and representations through the media discourse (s) and the rhetoric-discursive strategies used by the subjects involved in these processes production, reception and circulation of senses.
Ph.D.. MICHELLE NAVE VALADÃO.
TEACHING PORTUGUESE AS A SECOND LANGUAGE TO DEAF (2015 – current). Academic Master Degree: (3) / Ph.D.. Researcher (3) / IC/ CNPq Scholarship (1) / FAPEMIG MS Scholarship: (1) / CAPES MS Scholarship: (1). In Brazil, the issues of language teaching and learning for the deaf are still recent. This can be attributed to the fact that the legal orientation concerning the linguistic condition of the deaf has only been achieved in the last two decades as a result of intense discussions and demands from the deaf community for their linguistic rights. For this reason, investigations on pedagogical practices, on the structure and school organization for teaching and learning of languages for deaf people, according to the current legislation, and the training of teachers are necessary. Moreover, it is necessary to understand the relation among LIBRAS, Portuguese and Foreign Languages in the school context, considering the specificities of the bilingual condition of deaf students and their language abilities. Based on this scenario, the objective of this research is to understand the perception of language teachers (Libras, Portuguese and Foreign Languages) on teaching the deaf, considering their teaching methodologies and curricular adaptations, and also to correlate this perception with the practices developed in classrooms with deaf students in inclusive schools. We know that this theme is incipient in Brazil, and therefore, it can contribute to expand and strengthen the understanding of the process of teaching and learning languages for the deaf, as well as broaden the understanding of the linguistic and social relations that permeate this process.
Ph.D.. MÔNICA SANTOS DE SOUZA MELO
ANALYSIS OF THE RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE AND THE MEDIATIZATION PROCESS OF RELIGION (2015 – current). Undergraduate: (7) / Academic Master Degree: (2) / IC Scholarship (3); CAPES MS Scholarship: (2). This project aims to characterize religious discourse in its diverse manifestations, considering the importance of such discourse for the promotion, maintenance, and revision of values and behaviors in our society. In order to reach this goal, we will focus on the selection of data from various genres (especially those broadcasted by the media, linked to various Christian religions, in order to describe and analyze not only their content – in other words, representations about family, relationship, faith, religiosity, among others, but also the strategies adopted to question and capture the congregation. We’re going to identify, compare and interpret these strategies in terms of verbal and visual performances, when appropriate. For this, it will be necessary to describe the discursive organization of the selected interactions, consisting of enunciative, descriptive, narrative and argumentative organizations, according to Charaudeau (2008). We also intend to analyze the occurrence of a re-dimensioning of the religious discourse due to the interference of the use of media technologies, evaluating the extent to which the process of mediatization of this type of religious discourse has led to the restructuring and transformation of religious practices, and how the religious and media fields would be helping to promote a change in the content of the religious discourse. Our interest in this phenomenon is not only to describe the configuration of the new discourses that emerge, but also to interpret the relation between the format they acquire with the conceptions defended by the segments they represent. Due to the kind of object that we propose to analyze, we face the challenge of dealing with different types of language that are articulated: the linguistic, visual and filmic, which imposes us the need to use a theoretical and methodological framework that conjugates these elements, in order to provide us with the description and interpretation of our object of study. We will adopt, as an axis of our research, the theoretical-methodological framework of the Semiolinguistic Analysis of the Discourse, by Patrick Charaudeau, associated with researches on digital media and studies in the area of Sociology.
DISCOURSE AND ARGUMENTATION: ANALYSIS OF DISCOURSES FROM THE ARTICULATION BETWEEN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND ARGUMENTATIVE THEORIES (2015 – current). Undergraduate: (1) / Academic Master Degree: (5) / IC Scholarship (1); CAPES MS Scholarship: (3). This project aims to address the various discursive practices from the perspective of Patrick Charaudeau’s Semiolinguistic Theory of Discourse, articulated with other related theories, such as semiotic studies, from Roland Barthes’s perspective, and argumentation studies, represented by the more traditional school, such as the old Rhetoric, and contemporary premises, like the New Rhetoric, by Perelman and Olbrechts Tyteca (1996). We consider that the genesis of discourse involves not only the choices that determine the organization of the text itself, but also the disposition generated in the listener by what is said and the construction of the image of the enunciator. These aspects permeate every language act in our daily social relations and allow us to glimpse the group’s socio-discursive imageries that surround the language act. Semiolinguistics considers it as the product of a context in which a sender and a receiver belong, and, as different people, can attribute different interpretations to the same linguistic expression. In this perspective, every language act is inserted in a general project of communication that is conceived by a communicating subject, who must organize his discourse according to the situation in which he finds himself. To do so, he is subordinated to a space of constraints, which comprise the minimum conditions to which the language act must satisfy in order to be valid, and to a space of strategies, corresponding to the choices that the subjects can make in the communicative staging. Following this orientation, we analyze the discourses of several domains, such as the media, the political, the juridical, the religious, among others.
Ph.D.. RONY PETTERSON GOMES DO VALE
ETHOS AND URBANITAS: THE LIMITS OF THE USE OF LAUGHTER IN SOCIAL DISCOURSES. (2017 – current). Master Academic Degree: (1) / CAPES MS Scholarship: (1). Considering the success (argumentative and commercial) of the use of laughter in our society, we notice that agents (socially and historically marked subjects) of other types of discourse are adopting discursive strategies typical of the Humorous Discourse. This entails thinking as urbanitas, a concept that provides the constraints and advantages to the use of laughter, presents itself in relation to the construction of the ethos by (i) subjects belonging to discourses considered “serious” (i.e., more rigidly controlled discourses such as the Scientific, the Legal, the Religious, etc.), or by (ii) subjects in communicative situations that are not necessarily humorous. Keeping this in mind, this project focuses not only on the identification and analysis of the use of laughter in social discourses, but also, in a systematic way, on the description and classification of the discourse subjects’ ethé. In other words, we seek to verify the impacts of the use of laughter on the ethos of certain subjects who represent social roles, a priori, unable to make strategic use of laughter due to the coercion of certain types of discourse or communicative situations, often rigidly ritualized. In order to undertake our analyzes, we have based on the theoretical-methodological premisses of Discourse Analysis, more specifically on the Semiolinguistic Theory of Patrick Charaudeau. However, due to the complex nature of the analysis of laughter (cf. Rony do Vale) and the premise that its full and reduced forms can cross several discourses as a discursive strategy, we will accept contributions from other areas of knowledge (i.e. social psychology, anthropology, literary criticism, political science, etc.), depending on the type of discourse to be analyzed.
LITERARY STUDIES
Ph.D.. ADÉLCIO DE SOUSA CRUZ
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE: DIALOGUES, CHALLENGES AND POETICS.
The contemporary literature presents a diversity of production that can be studied from the poetics and the strategies with respect to the representation stipulated by the literary texts themselves. Among the actions and resources presented, dialogues with the theater, cinema, music and performance, in addition, of course, the internal dialogue with its own tradition and literary production stand out. Three major schools seem to emerge in this context: the so-called new trends represented by “Marginal literature” and another symbolized by writers of the “new generation,” such as the names chosen to represent Brazil in literary fairs in Europe. The third way would be more affectionate to the “critical writers” and follower of the canon of the called “high culture”, disputing space among the university critique, the blogosphere and literary magazines in the digital environment. The dialogue that link the three lines seems, in the first instance, a dialogue and use of strategies carefully selected from theater, cinema, music and performance.
Ph.D.. ANGELO ADRIANO FARIA DE ASSIS
LITERARY BIOGRAPHISM: WAYS OF INTERPRETING THE MODERN PERIOD AND ITS CHARACTERS.
Biographism is a trend that has been gaining space in recent decades in the Brazilian panorama. If, in the first instance, publications in the Brazilian publishing market were composed largely of translations of works published abroad, over time works that focused on characters and stories related to Brazil began to emerge, gaining strength among writers and readers. This project aims to understand how biographism deals with themes that are important to History and allows its relation with Literature. We focus our research on works that have the modern period, especially the Portuguese Empire, as background. We also intend to understand how certain facts and characters are portrayed by this type of narrative. However, other temporal and thematic scope that use biographism as a basis, History as a tool and memory as sewing will be considered, looking for connections, commonalities, and specificities between factual and fictional narratives.
Ph.D.. EDSON FERREIRA MARTINS
THE PRESENCE OF CLASSICAL CULTURE IN BRAZILIAN LITERATURE POST-1822 (2016 – current) Academic Master: (1) / CAPES MS Scholarship: (1).The project seeks to revalue the concept of classic, from a comprehensive definition that understands it as a “reference point”, like something that survives, or, resists successive visits without losing the ability to generate new and stimulating senses, new and unusual, surprising and uncomfortable shapes. We intend to understand how Brazilian literature incorporates the legacy of Greco-Roman culture through dialogic processes, such as citations or allusions to historical or fictional characters, or even to cultural facts that refer to the world of ancient Greece and Rome, present in fictional works of different genres (novel, short story, poetry, play, etc.), produced by Brazilian authors inserted, prioritized but not exclusively, from the first half of the nineteenth century, when the proclamation of the independence of the country occurs, a period of great political, cultural and aesthetic effervescence in Brazil, which leaves behind the condition of a colony, and, for the first time in history, becomes independent from the old Portuguese metropolis. As specific objectives, we seek to (i) discuss the ways in which such works dialogue with the Greco-Roman culture, from the rewriting of transversal cultural themes found throughout the texts selected as corpora; (ii) reflect on the literary discourse from the construction of identities, memory and Brazilian symbolic spaces, seeking the understanding of the interactions among social, artistic and cultural practices.
Ph.D.. GERSON LUIZ ROANI
THE SACRED IN LUSOPHONIAN LITERATURE. (2015 – current). Undergraduate (2) Academic Master: (5) IC Scholarship (1) CAPES MS: (3). This project intends to study, during four years, the presence of the sacred in literature, investigating authors and works of Portuguese, Brazilian and African literature. We invest in a perspective that considers literature as a privileged area of manifestation of the experience of sacred. Based on this, the development of the project emphasizes interdisciplinarity by promoting a dialogue between Religion and Literary Studies. The research will be developed in four stages: 1) Representations of the experience of the sacred in literature; 2) The reception and literary reinvention of themes, motifs, and myths from the Jewish and Christian traditions; 3) The Evil represented by the figure of the Devil and his reception/reinvention in literature; 4) The representations of holiness by the literary or hagiography as a genre revisited by contemporary literature.
JEWISH MEMORY AND IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY PORTUGUESE FICTION. (2013 – 2016). Undergraduate (2) Academic Master: (4) / Doctorate Degree (2) IC Scholarship (1) CAPES MS: (3). This project aims to investigate the emergence of Jewish memory and identity in contemporary Portuguese fiction, considered significant for the study of the fictional transfiguration of the history of Portuguese Jews from the 15th century to the present day. In our time, several Portuguese literary texts envision this history as being marked by tragedy, exclusion and intolerance. At the same time, this assumes an important significance because the Portuguese novel “Post-Revolution of the Carnations” is marked by the critical revision of the Lusitanian literary and historical tradition, but it also stresses the need to revisit the memory and the Jewish roots of Portuguese culture.
Ph.D.. GRACIA REGINA GONÇALVES
THE POETICS OF THE BODY AND SPACE: THE LIMITS OF SUBJECTIVITY (2011 – 2016). Undergraduate: (1) / Academic Master: (4) / IC Scholarship /CNPq: (1) / Capes MS Scholarship: (2). Gender studies represent today a stratum of unequivocal representativeness within contemporary critical thinking. Through a variety of manifestations, from feminist theories that have contributed much to pave the way for other revendicating movements, to the recent studies of the man, extending to the queer theory, and to any other reflections that address the possible underlying dissonance to the belief in a subjectivity based exclusively on sex, these have been established as more legitimate clashes in the field of alterity. In this field, names such as Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf, precursors of the politics of the body, followed by, each with her own peculiarity, Elaine Showalter, Teresa de Lauretis, Elisabeth Badinter, and Judith Butler, in their most radical conception, proposed as examples of ways to rethink the concept through literary criticism. On the other hand, in parallel, scholars of social space such as David Harvey, Guy Debord, in a way, indebted to Raymond Williams, raise a new perspective on geography, increasingly seen from the prism of man, which, in our view, illuminates a possibility of fruitful interlocution with fictional texts from the literature scene in English, or vernacular, more specifically, from the twenty-first century. We believe that the contributions of these ideas will be innumerable and its impact expressive, going through other branches of intellectual inquiry, that is, the field of the social, the media, the judiciary, to which the representation of the body, its limits and implications interpose as an inexhaustible source of research.
DISPLACEMENT AND SUBJECTIVITY IN TRANSIT (2016 – current) Undergraduate (1) Academic Master (3) Ph.D..s (2) IC Scholarship (1) CAPES MS Scholarship (2). I consider, in this project, to reflect on the multiple challenges that come to the focus of a subject that transits, in its constitution, parameters such as identity and gender, gender and origin, origin and truth, in view of the awareness and fragility of such concepts, increasingly under blur. To that end, I intend to look at authors of the diasporic nature in the circuit of English-speaking literatures, especially from the Caribbean diaspora, focusing on, for example, the re-reading of official reports of slavery, as it occurs in the lens of authors such as Caryl Phillips, or the deconstruction of the genre based on stereotypes of their own culture, factor preponderant in the production of Junot Diaz, among others. This proposal is an extension of the studies already carried out on the manifestations or on the closure of the voice, regarding women in Africa and middle-class Brazilian women; the projection of queer theory in Brazil; the projection of queer theories; as well as on the ironic representation of referential myths linked to common sense, and Western ideological hegemony, all tuning to the criticism of the meanders of power. In this way, I intend to take a look at dislocations that do not simply position such subjects, but rather make them question themselves and the environment that surrounds them, opening perspectives for the discussion of subjectivity, always in process.
Ph.D.. IARA CHRISTINA SILVA BARROCA
WOMEN IN LETTERS/LETTERS OF MINAS. This project seeks to highlight the relevant and unequivocal participation of women within the framework of national literature and contemporary critical thinking. From the innumerable manifestations of representativeness embodied in the feminist movements, which have contributed greatly to the unveiling of the female subject in the view of her special participation in the historical and literary context of the country, the theories on gender studies intensify the urgency of constant reflections on the problems of gender, which passes through questions of identity, alterity, places and non-places of the feminine, male domination, the subversion of subjectivity based exclusively on sex, the domain of the patriarchy, the female body in the (de) limits of interpretation, performativity, among others. Talking about gender is not about denying sexual and bodily differences between men and women, but to understand them not as natural and determined, but as social and power relations, which have produced hierarchies and domination. According to Scott, gender is the social organization of sexual differences. It is a knowledge that establishes meanings for bodily differences. In face of this reflexive proposal, names like Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf, pioneers in the politics of the body, following them, each with its peculiarity, Elaine Showalter, Teresa de Lauretis, Elisabeth Badinter, as well as Judith Butler, will be proposed as examples of ways to rethink the concept via literary criticism.
Ph.D.. JOELMA SANTANA SIQUEIRA
ARTISTIC FORM AND SOCIAL REPRESENTATION (2015 – current). Undergraduate: (1) / Academic Master: (4) / Ph.D..s: (4) / IC Fapemig Scholarship: (1) / CAPES MS Scholarship (3). This project is an outline of an earlier project entitled “Dialogues between João Cabral de Melo Neto and Clarice Lispector and issues of art and literature in the middle of the twentieth century”, which aimed to investigate dialogues between poetry and prose from the the work of these two writers, in view of relevant aspects of their artistic trajectories, their literary texts, their reflections and the debate on modern art in the context of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s in Brazil. At the end of a year of research, among other aspects relevant to the deepening of the comparative analysis between the work of the two writers, the Cabraline emphasis in the rural space and the preference of Lispector for the urban space stood out. The present research aims to investigate this aspect, which involves the study of space in literature and the analysis of mediations between text and context, in order to deepen the discussion about figurative space and the poetic form in the work of several modern writers. The project will be carried out along three years, with the following stages involving firstly the entire works of João Cabral de Melo Neto and Clarice Lispector: 1. A systematic study of the lyric in its relation with prose in modernity; 2. A systematic study of the romance form; 3. A study of the complete works of João Cabral de Melo Neto and Clarice Lispector; 4. A comparative analysis of spaces in the work of those writers based on the delimitation of a corpus and knowledge acquired in the previous research on the dialogues between the two writers.
LITERATURE AND THE PRESS (2016 – current). Undergraduate: (1) / Academic Master: (1) / Ph.D..s: (4) / IC Fapemig Scholarship: (1) / CAPES MS Scholarship: (1). The present project aims to investigate in different journalistic sources the presence of Brazilian literature works and writers, aiming at possible contributions to literary studies. We consider that knowing and analyzing what was published in the newspapers and magazines about our writers is also to seek to understand and discuss other factors and spaces, besides the work and the academy, that interfere in the field of scholarly production. The press as a source of research in Brazil is not a novelty, especially in the historiographic works. What is new for today’s researchers is mainly the possibility of researches amplified by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which facilitated the access to these journals. In this sense, we highlight the importance of the Digital Hemeroteca, housed in the National Library since July 2012, where we have access to hundreds of Brazilian newspapers and magazines from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Ph.D.. SIRLEI SANTOS DUDALSKI
ADAPTATIONS, TRANSCRIPTIONS: CONTEMPORARY THEATER PATHS (2016 – current). Undergraduate: (5) / Academic Master: (2) IC Fapemig Scholarship: (1) / CAPES MS Scholarship: (1). The presence of adaptations in contemporary theater is a recurring procedure and has remote roots, as it can be seen in Shakespearean dramaturgy. It is well known that William Shakespeare used to appropriate versions of existing stories. Much of his dramaturgy was produced from the transcription of these versions, which also reveal his undeniable genius. Versions, appropriations, adaptations, transpositions, re-readings, recreations, transcriptions, intertexts, hypertexts, palimpsests. This research will focus on fthe study of these concepts and the texts produced from them by the dramaturgy in English and Portuguese (and/or from them). In the paradigm of Julia Kristeva, we consider art, music, drama, dance and literature to be a living mosaic, “a dynamic intercession of textual surfaces” (Sanders, 2006). At the core of our research is the analysis of the process, the ideology and methodology involved in the adaptations/transcriptions, and the judgment of value is somewhat secondary. In a dialogue between the versions, similarities and differences will be emphasized, bearing in mind the purpose of formulating a critical and theoretical thinking about the study of adaptations / transcriptions.