Seminar
Broke heritages

June 23rd, 2010
17:00, CES Seminar Room, 2nd Floor, CES - Coimbra

Paulo de Medeiros, Utrecht University

Within the grant “A month at CES”

Free entrance – Participants will receive a certificate of participation

Presentation
Through a series of brief observations of contemporary images and texts, from fashion commercials to romances by Lobo Antunes or Toni Morrisson, the goal is to approach the issue of broke or ruined heritages, an essential confrontation in order to rethink a post-imperial Europe. Based on gender, race and class questioning in relation to the ghostly legacies of a Europe facing a severe identity crisis, and to the imperative of cultural criticism, as base for political reflection, the present work combines elements from post-colonial theories and notions of cultural memory.

Biographic Note

Paulo de Medeiros holds the Chair of Portuguese Studies at Utrecht University. As visiting Professor he has taught at several universities in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, and the UK. His research centers on Luso-Brazilian narrative, literary and cultural theory with a focus on the interrelations between politics and literature, as well as on postcolonial issues. He has recently edited Postcolonial Theory and Lusophone Literatures (Utrecht, 2007) and co-edited a number of journal issues in Portugal as well as in the UK and the USA, the most recent of which is a thematic issue of the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies on “Iberian Autobiography” (2008). He heads the Department of Portuguese Studies and coordinates the interdisciplinary MA on Western Literature and Culture and the Research MA on Comparative Literary Studies. Current research projects involve questions of contemporary poetics, the intellectual relations between Portugal and Northern Europe, and the representation of conflict.