Editorial Note

This issue goes to press at a time when the world is faced with one of the most serious sanitary crises of all times due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Reading through the articles and book reviews that appear in this issue from the confinement of my home, I realize that we are privileged to have the opportunity to continue to work during these unprecedented times despite the anxiety that accompanies these profound changes and the uncertainties that they bring. I am humbled and grateful for the Luso-Brazilian Review team who met the publication deadlines as the world came to a sudden halt: Jara Ríos, our editorial manager who keeps everything moving smoothly, our assistants, Mariana Oliveira (Portuguese texts), Levi Cross (English texts), and Carolina Ferreira (Book Reviews), and my colleague Rebecca Atencio for her valuable work as editor of Brazilian literature and culture and her input in all areas of the journal.

As daily I am hearing of conferences and other academic meetings being cancelled or postponed, I am reminded of how necessary our intellectual community is to the vibrancy of our field. While we could, to a certain degree, work entirely in isolation as these times are forcing us to do, I realize that serendipitous conversations around the literal or figurative coffee pot in an academic department, breakout or Q& sessions at a conference, or casual encounters in an academic setting are essential to helping formulate our ideas and the development of our arguments. Often research articles stem from the delivery and discussions following the presentations of conference papers and I hope that those of you who were unable to present your work at an academic event due to the state of emergency we are experiencing this Spring will consider submitting extended versions of these papers to a future issue of the LBR. Furthermore, the LBR will be available without a paywall for the foreseeable future through Project Muse to enable scholars world wide access to the journal’s contents as on-site consultation becomes difficult throughout the profession. Please refer to https://about.muse.jhu.edu/resources/freeresourcescovid19/.

This issue brings together seven articles that showcase the work of colleagues in the areas of literature, film, visual culture, history, ethnography, environmental and women’s studies, often from interdisciplinary approaches that combine several disciplines. This issue opens with Edward Brudney’s study “(P)Reimagining the Nation: Citizenship, Labor and the State in António Ribeiro Sanches’s Cartas sobre a educação da mocidade” that provides a novel reading of the Cartas as a means to rethink Portuguese citizenship through the ideas of eighteenth-century labor in Portugal and throughout the Portuguese empire, with an interesting discussion of the problem of slavery (abolished in Portugal in 1761), military labor and the creation of a national military academy. The second article, “As dotadas e meeiras da Capitania da Paraíba: Os regimes de bens do casamento na colonialização do Brasil, 1661–1822,” by Luisa Stella de Oliveira Coutinho Silva, provides an analysis of women and their dowries by drawing on research from the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino and other archival evidence. This article will be of particular interest for scholars working on women’s legal history and colonial Brazil.

Moving to the contemporary period, Kátia da Costa Bezerra’s article, “JR’s Morro da Providência Exhibit. A Politics of Cultural Intervention,” discusses the work of the French photographer JR that focused on women from the Carioca favela Morro da Providência; her discussion draws from Foucault, hooks and Bourdieu to understand these photographs as a means of resistance to a traditional, gendered and racialized gaze. Kristal Bivona’s article, “Historical Fiction and the Age of Fake News. Debating Brazil’s Past Over Audiovisual Culture,” is a timely discussion of José Padilha’s Netflix series O mecanismo set in parallel to the polemics that surrounded Bruno Barreto’s 1997 film O que é isso, companheiro?, bringing us to focus beyond the content of these productions to the debates that ensue following their release. Maureen O’Dougherty’s ethnographic study, “Paths Into and Out of Totalizing Motherhood. Discourses of Middle-Class Brazilian Women Professionals,” discusses interviews the author conducted with Brazilian women over the span of several years in view of understanding their different positions in relation to motherhood and how they perceive, emotionally and morally, motherhood in relation to leading a professional life, and the degree to which these women rely on others to take care of their children.

The next article, “Birds, Rivers, Book. Material Mimesis in João Guimarães Rosa’s Grande sertão: veredas,” by Victoria Saramago, analyzes Rosa’s only novel through the lens of ecocriticism and narrative theory to focus on the materiality of the text as mirrored through its often-labyrinthine content. The issue ends with a co-authored piece by Idelber Avelar and Moysés Pinto Neto, “Energia limpa e limpeza étnica. As condições discursivas, jurídicas e políticas do ecocídio de Belo Monte,” that discusses the polemics around the building of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam on the Xingu River and its ecocidal consequences for the region.

While some editorial work will continue during the following weeks, I foresee that there will necessarily be some delay with getting books out to potential reviewers as the University of Wisconsin, Madison campus has closed for all non-essential employees until further notice. We will continue to accept new articles and, as always, we are very grateful to our colleagues in the different fields who selflessly read and evaluate articles for the journal. This peer-review process relies heavily on this behind-the-scenes workforce to whom I express my sincere thanks.