Aparecida Vilaça (Professor of Social Anthropology at the Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) is among the most eminent living anthropologists, well known for her ethnographic and theoretical work including books such as Strange Enemies: Indigenous Agency and Scenes of Encounter in Amazonia. Her more recent work has experimented with the forms and modes of writing that might encapsulate and be shaped by indigenous forms of life, and with the thresholds between ethnography, memoir, and fiction.

Participants in this seminar will have the opportunity to read and to discuss with Prof. Vilaça the opening chapters from her ethnographic memoir Paletó e eu: Memórias do meu pai indígena (published in English as Paletó and Me: Memories of my Indigenous Father) and as-yet unpublished English translations of two of her ethnographic short stories (co-authored with Francisco Vilaça Gaspar and published as Ficções amazônicas).

The seminar will be of interest to students and scholars of anthropology, literature, global cultures, indigenous studies, history, and postcolonial and decolonial practice.

To receive copies of the readings please email iris.pearson@new.ox.ac.uk.