2022 News & Events

Lecture by Prof. Anna Klobucka, UMass Dartmouth

Wednesday, October 26, at 5:00 p.m.

Presented by the Saab Center for Portuguese Studies in partnership with the Department of World Languages and Cultures.

When Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa, the authors of New Portuguese Letters, were accused of offending public morals and taken to court by the Portuguese dictatorship in 1972, their prosecution gradually became an international cause cèlebre due to the energetic involvement of feminist activists of the so-called second wave, mainly in Western Europe and the United States. Drawing on archival materials held in the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other contemporary sources, this lecture will discuss the highlights of New Portuguese Letters’ unexpected notoriety in the US before and around the 1974 Carnations Revolution, which put an end to the Estado Novo regime.

About Prof. Anna Klobucka

Anna M. Klobucka is Professor of Portuguese and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She is the author of The Portuguese Nun: Formation of a National Myth (2000; Portuguese translation 2006), O Formato Mulher: A Emergência da Autoria Feminina na Poesia Portuguesa (2009), and O Mundo Gay de António Botto (2018). She has also coedited After the Revolution: Twenty Years of Portuguese Literature 1974-1994 (1997), Embodying Pessoa: Corporeality, Gender, Sexuality (2007; Portuguese edition 2010), and Gender, Empire and Postcolony: Luso-Afro-Brazilian Intersections (2014).

This webinar is incorporated into Prof. Diana Gomes Simões’ course on Lusophone women writers in translation.

More Information

For more information, please contact Prof. Diana Simões: diana_gomessimoes@uml.edu

Keynote address by Pedro Bicudo

Saturday, May 7, 2022 at 10 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

In-Person at Coburn Hall, Room 255, and via Zoom

Free and open to the public.

Presented by the Saab Center for Portuguese Studies in partnership with the Portuguese American Digital Archive at the Center for Lowell History.

Schedule

• 10 a.m.: Keynote address by Pedro Bicudo, former RTP (Portuguese Public Television) correspondent in Washington: “Portuguese Waves: Ethnic Radio in New England.”
  
• 10:45 a.m.: A facilitated panel discussion, “Portuguese-American Radio in Greater Lowell,” with hosts of programs on the air from 1970 to today. Invited Radio Announcers:
  • Paulo Bettencourt
  • Dimas Espínola
  • Luís Melo
  • Natália Melo
  • Jorge Coelho Oliveira
  • Filomena Simão
  • Maria de Lourdes Serpa
    
• Noon: Launching of News from the American Dream: A History of the Portuguese-American Press by Alberto Pena Rodriguez, Tagus Press at UMass Dartmouth.

Coordinators of the Colloquium: Gregory Fitzsimons and Frank F. Sousa.

More Information

For more information, please contact Prof. Frank F. Sousa, Director, Saab Center for Portuguese Studies by email: frank_sousa@uml.edu or call: 978-934-5199.

Travel to Lisbon, Portugal with UMass Lowell during the Summer for an Immersive Experience!

May 23 - June 14, 2022

Enjoy a unique international experience in Lisbon, the largest city and capital of Portugal (member of the European Union.)

Immerse yourself in this at once ancient and modern waterfront city characterized by a thrilling culture, delicious cuisine, and booming nightlife. Take advantage of the rich architectural history of Romanesque and Gothic churches, a medieval castle, and UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Revel in a diverse music scene, with the soulful melodies of Portuguese fado, varieties of Cape Verdean and Brazilian music, cutting-edge jazz, and classical music. Take strolls through the bairros of this beautiful, safe and historic city, or get around in a first-rate public transport system.

There will be side-trips to picturesque towns, including Sintra, also a World Heritage Site.

Spend two weeks exploring everything Lisbon has to offer, while earning 3 college credits.

Get more information and register online

Open To All University Majors.

• May 23 - June 14, 2022
• Required UMass Lowell On-Site Course: Special Topics: in Portuguese Studies - Lisbon in Film and Culture (see below)
• Financial aid may be applicable.
• Scholarships available up to $1,500

Special Topics in Portuguese Studies - Lisbon in Film and Culture

By Diana Gomes Simões, Ph.D.

Across the centuries, Lisbon has been a source of inspiration for writers and film directors. This course will study films (Portuguese and foreign) and cultural artifacts that tell the story of the capital city of Portugal from the Middle Ages to the present. We will discuss the city in the classroom and go out and about to explore sites that are the setting for the films under consideration. Taught in English.

Diana Gomes Simões teaches Portuguese at UMass Lowell. Her research focuses on literature and cinema. She has published on Portuguese, Brazilian, and Lusophone African literatures and cultures.

More Information

For more Information and to apply, please contact the UMass Lowell Study Abroad office via email: studyabroad@uml.edu or contact Diana Gomes Simoes via email: Diana_GomesSimoes@uml.edu.

The 2022 UMass Lowell Summer Program in Lisbon, Portugal, is sponsored by the Saab Center for Portuguese Studies and the Department of World Languages and Cultures in the College of Fine Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.

Biographer Richard Zenith in Conversation with Prof. Todd Avery

Thursday, March 24, 2022 at 11 a.m.

In-Person at Coburn Hall, Room 275, and via Zoom

Presented by the Saab Center for Portuguese Studies in partnership with the Department of English.

A critic for the New York Times has described Pessoa: A Biography as “mammoth, definitive and sublime.... an account of a life that plucks at the very borders and burdens of the notion of a self.” In conversation with Todd Avery and a live and a virtual audience, Zenith will discuss the genius and the not-so-ordinary life of Fernando Pessoa, the early-20th-century Portuguese writer who was famously many different selves, and who occupies a prominent position in the pantheon of European literary modernism.

About Richard Zenith

Richard Zenith is the preeminent translator, editor, scholar, and biographer of Fernando Pessoa.

His Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems won a PEN Award for Poetry in Translation; Pessoa: A Biography (2021) was a New York Times Critics’ Top Books of 2021.

He has translated many Portuguese writers from Luís de Camões to the present.

About Todd Avery

Todd Avery, a professor of English at UMass Lowell, is a scholar of British modernism and of the groundbreaking biographer Lytton Strachey.

His current research explores the birth of biographical fiction in the 1920s and 1930s.

Read Todd Avery's UMass Lowell Faculty biography.

More Information

For more information, please contact the Saab Center for Portuguese Studies by email: natalia_melo@uml.edu or call: 978-934-5199.

A Lecture by Prof. Kimberley DaCosta Holton, Rutgers University, Newark

Wednesday, March 16, 2022 at 5 p.m. via Zoom

Presented by the Saab Center for Portuguese Studies in partnership with the departments of World Languages and Cultures, Music, and Sociology.

This lecture explains the emergence of a new syncretic music called “Fadocore” – a mixture of the Portuguese urban ballad form “fado” with the post-war genres of goth and post-punk music. Fadocore, the haunting creation of Chris da Rosa and his “Judith and Holofernes” bandmates, emerged out of the Portuguese-American immigrant community of California’s Central Valley in the early 2000s. Fadocore’s syncretism unveils competing tensions between cultural orthodoxy and youthful rebellion. This new genre exposes the way in which Portugal’s national song, the Fado, can be twisted into postpunk registers for the purpose of finding new forms of lament.

About Kimberly DaCosta Holton

Kimberly DaCosta Holton is associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at Rutgers University, Newark.

She is the author of Performing Folklore: Ranchos Folclóricos from Lisbon to Newark (Indiana UP, 2005) and co-editor with Andrea Klimt of Community, Culture and the Makings of Identity: Portuguese-Americans Along the Eastern Seaboard (Tagus Press, 2009).

Holton is the founder and director of the Ironbound Oral History Project and is currently working on a book about fado performance in the U.S.

This webinar is incorporated into Prof. Diana Gomes Simões’ course on Lusophone music and culture.

More Information

For more information, please contact the Saab Center for Portuguese Studies by email: natalia_melo@uml.edu or call: 978-934-5199.

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Presented by the Saab Center for Portuguese Studies Distinguished Writers Series.

Eminent Portuguese-American writers Frank X Gaspar and Millicent Borges Accardi read and share insights about poetry and Luso experiences of immigration, seafaring, family ties and saudade. Borges Accardi will read from her new book, Through a Grainy Landscape, a collection inspired by contemporary Luso literature.

About Frank X. Gaspar

Frank X. Gaspar was born and raised in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the setting for his novels and inaugural book of poems. The author of five poetry collections and three novels, Gaspar’s work has received major literary awards and appeared widely in magazines and literary journals, including The New Yorker, The Nation, The Harvard Review, The American Poetry Review. He currently teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at Pacific University, Oregon.

About Millicent Borges Accardi

Millicent Borges Accardi is the author of four poetry collections. Among her awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, CantoMundo, Fulbright, Foundation for Contemporary Arts NYC, Creative Capacity, Fundação Luso-Americana, and Barbara Deming Foundation. She lives in the hippie-arts community of Topanga, CA, where she curates Kale Soup for the Soul and Loose Lips poetry readings.

More Information

For more information, please contact the Saab Center for Portuguese Studies by email: natalia_melo@uml.edu or call: 978-934-5199.

A Lecture By by Prof. Lívia Franco, Catholic University of Portugal

Thursday, February 3 at 5 p.m. via Zoom

Presented by the Saab Center for Portuguese Studies.

How may one read the causes and results of the recent snap elections in Portugal? In a country with one of the highest Covid-19 vaccination rates in the world, but sliding towards the tail of Europe in other areas, what are the main challenges the new government will have to face? And what impact will the newly arrived parties have on the country’s political/parliamentary dynamics? Will there be changes in Portugal's geopolitical positioning, namely in its strategic relationship with the US? We will talk about this and much more at this event. Join us!

About Lívia Franco

Lívia Franco is Professor and Senior Researcher at the Institute for Political Studies, Catholic University of Portugal (IEP-UCP) as well as an Associate Researcher at the European Council for Foreign Relations (ECFR)

During Fall Semester 2021, Prof. Lívia Franco was FLAD Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. Her areas of research include Contemporary International Politics, Transatlantic Relations, Portuguese Foreign Policy and European Politics. Among her publications is the book Pensando a democracia com Tocquiville (2012). She regularly serves as commentator on European and International Affairs in national and international media outlets.

More Information

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