In-person method GENERAL OBJECTIVE The course aims to analyze the Old Republic (1889–1930) from the relationships between art, culture, politics, urbanism, science, sociability and symbolic construction of the Brazilian nation. The proposal stems from the understanding that republican modernization was not only an economic and institutional project, but also a vast cultural and visual project, deeply marked by hygienism, scientific racism, eugenics and the attempt to construct a national identity associated with ideals of progress, civilization and whitening of the population. Throughout the classes, the ways in which art, architecture, literature, music, theater, photography, illustrated press and scientific discourses participated in the elaboration of an official vision of modern Brazil will be investigated, frequently based on the silencing or idealization of Black, indigenous, backland, working-class and poor immigrant populations. The course also proposes to understand how these subalternized groups survived culturally within this project of exclusionary modernity, preserving traditions, religiosities, languages and forms of sociability frequently marginalized by republican elites. In this context, tensions between tradition and progress, mysticism and scientific rationality, coast and backland, civilization and barbarism will be discussed, as well as the construction of "great national heroes" in contrast with historically invisible subjects. SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES – Understand the formation of Brazilian urban culture between 1889 and 1930. – Analyze the role of art and culture in the symbolic construction of the Republic. – Investigate how hygienism, eugenics and scientific racism influenced public policies, urban projects and social representations. – Discuss the ideal of whitening the Brazilian population and its relations with immigration, education, medicine and visual culture. – Examine how Black people, indigenous peoples, urban workers, backlanders and immigrants were silenced, marginalized or idealized by official republican culture. – Understand tensions between popular tradition, religiosity, mysticism and discourses of progress and scientific rationality. – Reflect on artistic academicism and its relations with the construction of an idealized image of the nation. – Analyze modernism and the 1922 Week as an attempt to create a Brazilian cultural identity, including through the incorporation of popular and marginalized elements, even though conducted by sectors of intellectual elites. – Study working-class culture, strikes, social movements and the role of the immigrant as a subalternized subject in Brazilian modernization. – Relate art, architecture, urbanism, literature, photography, music and politics in the constitution of republican imaginary. CONTENT September 23, 2026 CLASS 1 – Academicism, social idealization and representation of the subaltern The National School of Fine Arts and the consolidation of Brazilian academicism. French and Italian influence in historical and allegorical painting. The creation of idealized images of the nation and the Brazilian people. The representation of the Black person, the indigenous person, the backland dweller and the worker between exoticization, romanticization and invisibility. Rodolfo Amoedo, Eliseu Visconti, Pedro Weingärtner, Belmiro de Almeida and Henrique Bernardelli. The tension between academic tradition and new artistic languages. Art as an instrument of legitimation of republican elites. September 30, 2026 CLASS 2 – Literature, music and popular culture: critical voices of the First Republic Machado de Assis and the ambiguities of republican society. Lima Barreto as a critic of social exclusion, racism and false Brazilian modernity. Olavo Bilac and official republican culture. The formation of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Review theater, café-concerts and urban bohemian life. Maxixe, choro and the...
