Maria Lúcia Pallares-Burke
Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge

The Brazilian historian and sociologist Gilberto Freyre (1900–87) was fascinated by the material culture of his region (Pernambuco, in the Northeast of Brazil), including culinary traditions, furniture, and buildings, from the “Big House” to the slave quarters. In this talk, Maria Lúcia Pallares-Burke focuses on Freyre’s concern with “the city as artifact”: his early interest in town planning, his Practical, Historical and Sentimental Guide to the City of Recife, and his defense—on ecological grounds—of the local vernacular architecture (the mucambos/shanties) against attempts to pull them down.

Maria Lúcia Pallares-Burke, a former professor at the University of São Paulo, is a Research Associate of the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge. She has worked on the circulation and reception of ideas in both European and Latin American contexts. She has also studied the intellectual trajectory of the Brazilian intellectuals Gilberto Freyre and Anísio Teixeira, a disciple of John Dewey, who worked for the democratisation of education in Brazil. Her books include The New History, Confessions and Conversations (2000); Gilberto Freyre, um vitoriano dos trópicos (2006); Gilberto Freyre: Social Theory in the Tropics (with Peter Burke, 2008), and a study of Rüdiger Bilden, a German who fought for the improvement of race relations in the USA.

Tuesday, September 5, 12:15 pm
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall

Lunch will be served starting at noon. Registration required.