Founded in 2013, with generous gift from the Saab Family Fund, the Saab Center for Portuguese Studies promotes the multidisciplinary study of the language, literature and culture of the vast and varied Portuguese speaking world comprised of over 250 million people in eight countries on four continents and its diaspora.

The Saab Center for Portuguese Studies at UMass Lowell and the Lowell Memorial Auditorium are proud to present international music star Mariza on Saturday, April 20 at 7:30 p.m at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. This event is part of a yearlong celebration of the Saab Center’s fifth anniversary and will mark the first time partnering with the Lowell Memorial Auditorium.  Proceeds from Sounds of Portugal: An Evening of Fado with Mariza will support activities like our student study abroad programs and campus and community cultural events. 

• Sponsorship opportunities
• Tickets

Learn More About Sounds of Portugal: An Evening of Fado with Mariza

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

The Saab Center for Portuguese Studies Distinguished Writers Series, the departments of English and World Languages and Cultures, and the Jack and Stella Kerouac Center for the Public Humanities present:

A reading and conversation with award-winning poet, novelist, children’s book author and essayist, Ana Luísa Amaral, author of the critically-acclaimed book of poems What’s in a Name?, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa and published by New Directions.

• When: Wednesday, April 24, 2019 at 2 p.m.
• Where: O’Leary Library, Room 478
  • Parking in the Wilder Lot
• Free and open to the public | Seating is limited

About What’s in a Name?

With the elliptical looping of a butterfly alighting on one’s sleeve, the poems of Ana Luísa Amaral arrive as small hypnotic miracles. Spare and beautiful in a way reminiscent both of Szymborska and of Emily Dickinson (it comes as no surprise that Amaral is the leading Portuguese translator of Dickinson), these poems—in Margaret Jull Costa’s gorgeous English version—seamlessly interweave the everyday with the dreamlike and ask “What’s in a name?”

About Ana Luísa Amaral

ANA LUÍSA AMARAL has published over thirty books of poetry, a play, a novel, essays, and several children’s books. She has been translated into over twenty languages and published in several countries, including the US. She has been awarded national and international prizes and distinctions, among which the Medal for Service to Literature from the cities of Paris and Porto, the Giuseppe Acerbi Prize for Poetry, the Grande Prémio of the Portuguese Association of Writers, the PEN Prize for Fiction, and the Jacinto Prado Coelho Essay Prize. She is professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Porto, and a scholar of Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson, and a translator.

The Azores: 9 Islands | 9 Photographers

An Exhibition at University Crossing

March 6 - April 17, 2019

An initiative of Estação Imagem with support from the Government of the Autonomous Region of the Azores and presented by The Saab Center for Portuguese Studies.

Opening Reception

• Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 5:30 p.m.
• Moloney Hall at University Crossing
• With a Keynote Address by Pedro Letria, noted artist and professor at Escola Superior de Artes e Design, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Spread through nine different islands, the Azores archipelago in the mid-Atlantic is a space where humans and nature have learned to live together since the 15th century.

Due to centuries of geographic isolation and powerful geological events like volcanoes and earthquakes, these islands are places with a strong identity and distinct personalities, conveyed through the lens of nine major Portuguese photographers, each focusing on one island.

The artists capture landscapes, gestures and glaces that evoke culture and expressions of identity. The sea is a perennial background and unifying feature, the mists of which enshroud the Azores in mystery and a magical allure.

Featured Artists

• Luís Barra
• Pedro Letria
• Bruno Portela
• Luís Ramos
• José Manuel Ribeiro
• Daniel Rocha
• José António Rodrigues
• Gonçalo Rosa da Silva
• Luís Vasconcelos

More Information

For more information, call the Saab Center by phone at: 978-934-5199 or email: Natalia_Melo@uml.edu.

Graça Índias Cordeiro

Graça Índias Cordeiro, professor of Urban Anthropology at ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon, is Inaugural Gulbenkian/Saab Visiting Professor in Portuguese Studies at UMass Lowell.

Graça Índias Cordeiro, professor of Urban Anthropology at ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon, is the inaugural Gulbenkian/Saab Visiting Professor in Portuguese Studies in Spring Semester 2019. Prof. Cordeiro will teach “Cultures of the World: Portuguese Society Culture” in the Department of Sociology and a seminar titled “The Portuguese-speaking World and Its Diaspora in Massachusetts” in the Honors College. Both courses will count toward the minor in Portuguese Studies. Prof. Índias Cordeiro is director of the doctoral program in Urban Studies at ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon and an affiliate of the Center for Research and Studies in Sociology. She is the author, editor or co-editor of eight books, and has been guest editor of eight special issues in academic journals in her field. She has published over sixty book chapters and peer-reviewed articles, and has been visiting professor at universities in the United States, Spain and Brazil. Her research focus is on social classifications, language and ethnicity, street and neighborhoods, and urban social history. In recent years she has conducted research in Boston on the Portuguese-speaking the intersection of language, ethnicity, and place in Portuguese-speaking communities, which has resulted in essays such as “An Immigrant in America, Yes, But Not an Emigrant in My Own Country! The Unbearable Weight of a Persistent Label,” in New and Old Routes of Portuguese Immigration (at press), “Neither Slum nor Élite Suburb: The Emergence of a Portuguese Colony in Cambridge, MA, in the early 20th century,” in Migration and Mill Work: Portuguese Communities in Industrial New England (at press), and “Belongings and Interactions: Negotiating Portuguese-speaking Identities in Boston,” in Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies 26 (2014). During her tenure at UMass Lowell Prof. Indias Cordeiro will expand her research into Lowell and environs and promote student research in this region.

The University of Massachusetts Lowell is grateful to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Elisia and Mark Saab and family for co-sponsoring the Gulbenkian / Saab Visiting Professor in Portuguese Studies Program.

See The Spring 2019 Portuguese Courses

To see many more photos from our News and Events please visit our Photo Galleries webpage.