Junior Fellows

Joanna M. Moszczynska, PhD became a Research Associate (postdoc) at the Center for International and Transnational Area Studies (CITAS) at the University of Regensburg in October 2020. From May to June 2021, she took over the deputy management of CITAS as a parental leave replacement.

From January 2016 to December 2018, she was a doctoral student in the DFG-funded International Research Training Group “Between Spaces” at the Latin America Institute of the FU Berlin. In 2020, she completed her doctoral thesis on the topic of Holocaust representation in Jewish-Brazilian literature after 1985. In 2018 she joined the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal CROLAR, Critical Reviews on Latin American Research.

Project: A Convivial Epistemology of Literature – Ryszard Kapuściński’s and Gabriel García Márquez’ Literary Journalism in the Cold War

Abstract:

My project furthers work on transregional literary and cultural studies with a focus on Latin America and its global entanglements. I propose to examine the character of these interconnections on the example of transnational literary journalism through the lens of the literary history framed as a history of entanglements (Werberger 2012). Combined with theoretical underpinnings drawn from affect theory (Massumi 1995) and TransArea literary studies (Ette 2012), my examination of the literary journalistic writings of Ryszard Kapuściński and Gabriel García Márquez is designed as a case study on a convivial epistemology of literature. It thus forms part of broader research on the hybrid genres of reportage and crónica as elements of a complex matrix of socio-historical and literary activity during the Cold War. My understanding of conviviality thereby does not limit itself to the configurations manifested in aesthetic practice, but also seeks to establish a framework for Cold War literary journalism as a social practice across borders. Consequently, the project concentrates on representations of conviviality while at the same time seeking to elaborate a methodological approach with regard to the circulation of knowledge together with its aesthetic, epistemic and social legitimation.

Main discipline: Literary Studies

Selected publications:
• Moszczyńska, Joanna M. “The Acts of Writing Oneself into Jewishness in Recent Jewish Brazilian Literature: Autofiction and Identity after the Holocaust in Jacques Fux’s Antiterapias (2012).” Journal of Jewish Identities 15, no. 1 (2022): 59-75. DOI.

• Moszczynska, Joanna M. “As porosidades do campo literário nacional: a emergência da literatura pós-Holocausto no Brasil / The porosities of the national literary field: the emergence of post-Holocaust literature in Brazil.” Revista Odisséia 5 (2020): 85-105. DOI.

• Moszczynska, Joanna M. “Nas águas do mesmo rio de Giselda Leirner: entrelaçamentos transnacionais femininos na escrita do Holocausto.” In Giros espacio-temporales: Repensando los entrelazamientos globales desde América Latina, ed. by Diana M. Hernández Suárez et al., 189-208. Berlin: Tranvía, 2019. ISBN 978-3-946327-16-7.

• Moszczynska, J. M. “Clarice Lispector e a latente escritura do desastre.” Arquivo Maaravi: Revista Digital De Estudos Judaicos Da UFMG, 11(21) (2017): 85–105. DOI.

Ana Carolina Torquato holds a PhD in Literary Studies from UFPR with a doctoral exchange programme at the Universität Potsdam and an MA in Literary Studies and Comparative Literature from the universities of Sheffield, Santiago de Compostela and Nova de Lisboa. Ana was awarded a BA in Literary Studies from UFPR. Her main areas of interest are literature, animal studies, disaster studies and ecocriticism. In her current research project, Ana is working on the representation of the relationship between human and non-human animals in zoos and aquariums in post-war Brazilian literature. Her main focus is power relations and the nature of animal agency established between human beings and species living in captivity.

Project: Zoos and Aquaria in Brazilian Literature: Relationships of Conviviality and Inequality among Human and Non-Human Animals

Abstract:
The project investigates how human-animal relationships are perceived and represented in urban zoos and aquariums in Brazilian post-war literature. The basis of my analysis is the selected works of two Brazilian writers, Clarice Lispector and João Guimarães Rosa. The corpus is composed of circa fourteen texts including three novellas and one short story by Clarice Lispector and a group of ten short stories by Guimarães Rosa. The themes of these narratives coincide since both of them report on visitations to zoos and aquariums located in Brazil and Europe. Besides commenting on the geographical recognition of the spaces, the stories’ narrators also remark on animal agency and the state of confinement of the animals observed. My analysis will focus on four major points: the description of zoos and aquariums; the presence or absence of any remarks concerning animals’ state of captivity; the description of the human-animal relationship and how the texts perceive animal agency in that specific environment. To underpin this discussion and to understand how animals’ presence in the cityscape has changed over time, the project uses a theoretical framework which dialogues with sociology, ethology, and the history of zoos and aquariums in Brazil and the world. It probes how urbanisation has historically interfered with human-animal relationships and takes a critical look at the rise of zoos and aquariums as places destined for both entertainment and, in contemporary times, animal preservation and research.

Main discipline: Literary Studies

Selected publications:
• TORQUATO, A. C.. Animality and Textual Experimentalism in João Guimarães Rosa?s My Uncle, the Jaguar. Word and Text: A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics, v. XI, p. 187-200, 2021.

• TORQUATO PINTO DA SILVA, ANA CAROLINA. Memória e reconhecimento em -Nenhum, nenhuma-, de João Guimarães Rosa. EM TESE (BELO HORIZONTE. ONLINE), v. 24, p. 247-261, 2019.

• TORQUATO, A. C.. O animal e o humano em A Confissão da Leoa, de Mia Couto, e ‘Meu tio o Iauaretê’, de João Guimarães Rosa. CADERNOS DE PÓS GRADUAÇÃO EM LETRAS (ONLINE), v. 17, p. 61-71, 2017.

• TORQUATO, A. C.. The Analysis of Love and influence in Machado de Assis and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Revista Versalete, v. 2, p. 156-169, 2014.

• Torquato, Ana Carolina. Estudo sobre a condição de ‘(não) animalidade humana’ e a dualidade do ‘eu’ na obra ‘Grande sertão: veredas’, de João Guimarães Rosa. EM TESE (BELO HORIZONTE. ONLINE), v. 20, p. 180-198, 2014.

Vanessa Massuchetto holds a PhD in Law, specialized in Legal History, by the Federal University of Paraná with a research exchange at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon, and a period as a guest at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory. Currently, she is a member of the research core on History, Law and Subjectivities and of the scientific association Women’s Studies Group (1558-1837): Women’s and gender studies in the early modern period and the long eighteenth century. Her research interests are women’s experiences, agencies and convivialities, gender relations, resistance, confrontation, social conflicts, criminal justice, ecclesiastical justice, and social uses of justice throughout the Modern Period in the Iberian American World.

Project: Women’s Experiences and Moral Crimes in Portuguese South America (1750-1800)

Abstract:
The colonial women of Portuguese America, even when inserted into unfavourable contexts, knew how to develop strategies to access behaviours, relations and competences that helped them to realise their interests. Many of these strategies were recorded in judicial processes, which show that these characters often manoeuvred a series of multinormativities circulating in colonial justice to their benefit so that they could live in better conditions. The manipulation of the fluid multinormativities, in turn, was carried out in different ways depending on the outcome, since secular and ecclesiastical institutions were imbued with different forms of approaches as a result of, at least theoretically, being directed by different objectives. By focusing on the cases of moral crimes that occurred in the villages of Curitiba and Paranaguá in the second half of the 18th century, the project seeks to understand which social and institutional dynamics influenced the selection of jurisdictions by colonial women. With a focus on women’s experiences and the nuances of the institutional treatment given, the project’s aim is to analyse the means of action and personal strategies in the midst of the convivialities present in the context of each judgement; investigate which treatments they received and which they desired; and finally to understand which behaviours represented confrontation and resistance, and which meant adjustments within the colonial normativities.

Main discipline: Legal History

Selected publications:
• MASSUCHETTO, V. C.. Estupradores (DCH). Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, 2022. (Forthcoming)

• MASSUCHETTO, V. C.. O levar da -honra e virgindade-. Revista Caderno Espaço Feminino do Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero e Pesquisa sobre a Mulher, v. 34, p. 229-254, 2021.

• MASSUCHETTO, V. C.; PEREIRA, L. F. L. . O rei como dispensador da graça: autos de livramento crime e cultura jurídica criminal em Curitiba (1777-1800). Tempo. Revista do Departamento de História da UFF, v. 26, p. 104-123, 2020.

• MASSUCHETTO, V.C.. Breves apontamentos sobre o Iluminismo jurídico-criminal português: rupturas e permanências no contexto de um “Estado” Jurisdicional. Duc in Altum, v. 12, pp 241-274, 2020.

• MASSUCHETTO, V. C.. Cultura Jurídica Criminal e Condição da Mulher na Curitiba do Século XVIII. In: Margarita Torremocha Hernández. (Org.). Mujeres, Sociedad y Conflicto (siglos XVII-XIX). 1ed.Valladolid: Castilla Ediciones, 2019, v. 1, p. 291-310.

Simone Toji holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of St Andrews, an MA in Sociology and Anthropology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and a BA in Social Sciences from the University of São Paulo. She is the author of the forthcoming monograph The immensity of being singular: Approaching migrant lives through resonance. She is a teaching fellow at Belas Artes University and an official at the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN). Her current projects explore questions in migration studies, ethnography, cosmopolitanism, urban studies, and cultural heritage.

Project: Cultural Heritage and Migration in Brazil: Identity and Conviviality Representations in Contention

Abstract:

Cultural heritage policies in Brazil have been predominantly concerned with narratives about the Brazilian nation. They constitute significant means for defining the representation of those who can be considered part of the country. In the case of international migrants, cultural heritage policies have operationalised the recognition of their legacies in two main ways: by applying a notion of assimilation, in which migrants are said to have become ‘Brazilians’; and by referring to a notion of multiculturalism that identifies migrants as groups of difference that constitute the nation. In other words, from the national perspective, the non-national is only acknowledged when the person becomes the same – ‘becoming Brazilian’ – or contrastive – ‘the other’. In investigating the request of families of Japanese origin to have an ecumenical religious celebration, Toro Nagashi, recognised as Brazilian cultural heritage, this project explores how the vision of coexistence in this celebration interrogates the national framework of the Brazilian cultural heritage policies and prompts heritage officials to face a more global and cosmopolitan perspective that encourages the imagining of other models of conviviality.

Main discipline: Anthropology

Selected publications:
•  Toji, Simone: The Immensity of Being Singular: Approaching Migrant Lives in São Paulo through Resonance. HAU Books and The University of Chicago Press. (Forthcoming)

•  Toji, Simone (2021): “Contingencies of wellbeing: the portrait of an international migrant in Brazil in pursuit of the good life.” In: Gronseth and Skinner (ed.) Mobilities of Wellbeing, Ethnographic Studies in Medical Anthropology. Carolina Academic Press.

•  Toji, Simone with Chiara Bortolotto, Panas Karampampas, and Philipp Demgenski (2020a): “Proving Participation: Vocational Bureaucrats and Bureaucratic Creativity in the Implementation of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.” Social Anthropology 28 (1): 66–82. DOI.

•  Toji, Simone (2020b): “Whose intangible cultural heritage? Cowboy culture, heritage self-determination and the expression of a divided nation in the context of populist politics in Brazil.” International Journal of Heritage Studies, 27, 1, 1-11.

•  Toji, Simone (2019): “The Gambiarra City: International Migrants’ Subjectivity and the Making of a Multi-Dimensional Urban Space in São Paulo,” Urbanities, 9, 66 – 83.

Jessica O’Leary is a Research Fellow at the Gender and Women’s History Research Centre at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, at the Australian Catholic University. She is a gender historian of the early modern period, interested in global history and connections between people around the world, especially in South America, Asia and Europe in the fields of politics, diplomacy, and cultural exchange.

Project: Echoes of Women: Gender, Conviviality, and Inequality in Portuguese America

Abstract:

Women played a crucial role in the shaping and making of Portuguese America. Yet, not many female voices survive directly. Low literacy levels between the sixteenth and nineteenth century meant that few women recorded their experience in their own words. It is mainly through the pens of male missionaries, merchants, politicians, and poets that the female experience survives. Reading for women in male-authored texts can yield important insights concerning the ways in which gender interacted with settler colonialism. Using written and visual sources, I aim to uncover the ways in which women contributed to and resisted the colonisation of Brazil through their interaction with, and understanding of, the land and the sea.

Main discipline: History

Selected publications:
• Jessica O’Leary, Elite Women as Diplomatic Agents in Italy and Hungary, 1470–1510 (York: ARC Humanities Press, 2022).

• Jessica O’Leary, ‘Cultural Immersion: Diplomacy, Learning and Mobility in the Childhood of Federico II Gonzaga during the War of the League of Cambrai (1508-1516)’, Parergon 38, no. 2 (2021): 13–42.

• Jessica O’Leary, ‘Converting the Cityscape : Emotions, Religion and Civic Ritual in the Renaissance City for the Tenshō Embassy’ (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021).

• Jessica O’Leary, ‘New Christian Family Networks in the First Visitation of the Inquisition to Brazil – The Case of the Nunes Brothers (1591–1595)’ (Amsterdam University Press, 2020).

• Carolyn James and Jessica O’Leary, ‘Letter Writing and Emotions, 1100-1700’, in The Routledge History Handbook to Emotions in Europe, 1100-1700, ed. Susan Broomhall and Andrew Lynch (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), 256–68.

Raphael Schapira received his PhD in Anthropology and Sociology from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in 2021. Between 2019 and 2020 he was a Swiss National Science Foundation Doc.Mobility Fellow at the Interculturalism, Migration and Minorities Research Centre in the Department of Anthropology of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. His research interests include the anthropology of sport and the body, urban anthropology, mobility, populism, and engaged anthropology. Based on fieldwork undertaken in Rio de Janeiro among practitioners of the martial art Brazilian jiu-jitsu, he has published on evangelical Brazilian jiu-jitsu, urban sociality and inequality, and infrastructures of (im)mobility.

Project: “Racial Conviviality” in the Periphery: The Production of Colour-Blindness among Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Practitioners in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Norte

Abstract:
My research project investigates how practitioners of the martial art Brazilian jiu-jitsu (Bjj) in Rio de Janeiro’s zona norte use their sport to create an egalitarian community of “virtuous warriors” that transgresses discrimination based on class, gender and race. The Brazilian state often enacts spectacular military violence against drug traffickers in the North Zone. But the area is also described as a space of solidarity and meaningful personal relations of people of different social backgrounds. Bjj coaches construct their social sports projects as colour-blind spaces free of symbolic and social boundaries between racial categories. In doing so, they counteract the consequences of violence and state neglect many poor and racialised Brazilians suffer in this area. However, the coaches also reproduce the political Right’s law-and-order discourse targeting poor and black youths if they become criminals. How do Bjj coaches navigate the tension between favouring social inclusion and supporting punitive policies? What kind of “racial conviviality” does this create? By answering these questions, my research will contribute to the debate on Brazil’s popular classes’ alleged conservative turn, which became widely visible with President Bolsonaro’s electoral victory in 2018 and is an important factor regarding the upcoming 2022 presidential election.

Main discipline: Anthropology

Selected publications:
• Peter Bille Larsen, Mô Bleeker, Isabel Käser, Esther Leemann, Susan Riva, Raphael Schapira, Yvan Schulz, and Ellen Hertz. 2022. “Anthropological Engagement in the International Sphere: A Conversation.” Tsantsa, no. 27. (Forthcoming).

• Schapira, Raphael. 2021. “Warriors Trained by God: Embodying Evangelical Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in Rio de Janeiro’s Periphery.” In Performing the Sacred in Public: Understanding Contemporary Urban Religious Forms, edited by Mar Griera, Paul Bramadat, Marian Burchardt, and Julia Martinez-Ariño. New York ; London: Bloomsbury.

• Schapira, Raphael, and Henrike Neuhaus. 2021. “Of Medals and Recognition: Producing Urban Sociality through Martial Arts in Brazil and Argentina.” In Why Latin America Matters, edited by Soledad Garcia Ferrari, 259–74. Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh, Centre for Contemporary Latin American Studies.

• Schapira, Raphael. 2021. “Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as a Space of Embodied Citizenship.” Geneva: The Graduate Institute Geneva.

• Schapira, Raphael. 2019. “(Im)mobilitities of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Coaches from Rio de Janeiro’s Periphery.” Tsantsa, no. 24.