Sabrina Gledhill's Weblog

AlphaAlpha

hsgledhill — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:54:37 +0000

I’m very excited to be part of Regina Pinto’s AlphaAlpha project, which includes the work of several talented artists (my contribution is “Nossa Senhora do A”).

Symposium on the British Presence in Bahia

hsgledhill — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:11:53 +0000

I’m organising the “INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON DIPLOMACY, ECONOMICS AND CULTURE: THE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH PRESENCE IN BAHIA” which will be held from 3rd to 8th November 2008 in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

This cultural event is being promoted by the St. George’s Society and carried out by my company, Five-Star International Communications. It has the support and approval of the British Embassy, is in receipt of funding from FAPESB and is being hosted by the Centro de Memória da Bahia, Fundação Pedro Calmon from 3 to 7 November.

Participation is free of charge; however, places are limited. If you are interested in participating, please contact me, Sabrina Gledhill, at britanicosnabahia@gmail.com to reserve your place.

From 3 to 7 Nov, the programme will be in Portuguese at the auditorium of the Central Library in Barris. On the 8th, a special event will be held at the British Cemetery Chapel, where the presentations that were translated during the main event will be given once again in English, without translation:
Marc Herold – “The British Contribution to Bahia”
Louise Guenther – “The British Merchant Community in Bahia in the 19th century”
John Vignoles – “Charles Blacker Vignoles and Hutton Vignoles: The British engineers who built the Bahia and São Francisco Railway”

For further information (in Portuguese) visit: britanicosnabahia.blogspot.com

Seminar on Manuel Querino

hsgledhill — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:06:33 +0000

Last week, from August 25 to 29, I took part in the National Seminar on the Life and Works of Manuel Querino at the Geographic and Historical Institute of Bahia (IGHB) in Salvador, Bahia. The speakers during the week-long event included Maria das Graças Andrade Leal, the author of a PhD dissertation on Querino’s life (a biography based on his work), Vanda Machado, who discussed Querino’s impact on African-Brazilians today, Vivaldo da Costa Lima, an anthropologist who focused on Querino’s work on Bahian cuisine, Luiz Alberto Ribeiro Freire, who discussed Querino as a pioneer in Bahian art history, Wlamyra Albuquerque, who spoke about Querino and his involvement in an African-inspired Carnival group, Mestre Cobra Mansa, who gave a presentation on his research into the African roots of Capoeira Angola, and Ilana Seltzer Goldstein, the author of O Brasil Best-Seller de Jorge Amado, who concentrated on Tent of Miracles and its main character, partly inspired by Querino.

I gave two talks, one on Manuel Querino’s struggle against pseudo-scientific racism and another, representing Consuelo Novais Sampaio, on E. Bradford Burns’s studies of Querino. For more information (in Portuguese) see my blog on Querino – mrquerino.blogspot.com

Manuel Querino at Brasa IX

hsgledhill — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:43:31 +0000

I attended Brasa IX, the ninth congress of the Brazilian Studies Association, held at Tulane University in New Orleans, from March 27 to 29. On the afternoon of the 29th, I gave a presentation on Manuel Querino: the biographical section of “Manuel Querino: Um Pioneiro e Seu Tempo” (Manuel Querino: A Pioneer and His Time).

The conference was a very rewarding experience – well worth the long, exhausting and expensive trip from the Northeast of Brazil. Better yet, most of the panels I attended made it clear that Manuel Querino is more relevant and significant than ever. Several papers stressed the need to produce and disseminate positive images of blacks in Brazil, from slave times to the present. That was exactly what Querino strove to do during the last stage of his lifelong activism (after being a republican, abolitionist, labour leader and politician) – he was one of the “indispensable” ones, as defined by Bertolt Brecht.*

The audience for the panel in which I took part was small, but the response was very encouraging. It became clear that Querino has something to offer to people from different fields: art history, ethnography, folklore, black history and Brazilian history in general. One question that came up after my presentation merits further reflection: why was Querino overlooked and excluded from the official history of African-Brazilian studies in Brazil, by none other than Gilberto Freyre?

The simple answer is that he was a victim of ostracism and scorn because of his colour. But it goes further than that: in the words of folklorist Frederico Edelweiss, “How often [Querino] must have heard that pat and still common line: ‘what an uppity Negro!’ His vindication of his black brothers made him more enemies than friends; many more enemies…” In other words, Querino is yet another example of the “trap door” aspect of the “mulatto escape hatch”.

*There are men who struggle for a day, and they are good;
There are others who struggle for a year, and they are better;
There are those who struggle for many years, and they are very good;
But there are some who struggle all their lives,
And they are indispensable.
- Bertolt Brecht

hsgledhill — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 02:15:33 +0000

Talk on Manuel Querino in New Orleans

hsgledhill — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:39:09 +0000

BRASA IX, the 2008 edition of the Brazilian Studies Association’s annual conference, will be held in New Orleans from March 27-29. I will be giving a talk on the 29th, titled Manuel Querino (1851-1923) – Brazil’s First Black Vindicationist as part of the panel on Racial and Ethnic Representations in 19^th-Century Brazil

You can download my paper “Manuel Querino – Um Pioneiro e Seu Tempo” here (BRASA website) and here (my Querino blog)

Flickr

hsgledhill — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:59:15 +0000

I’ve posted lots of photos that I’ve taken in the last few decades – most of them in Bahia – at Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brinka/

FrenchMottershead’s SHOPS project

hsgledhill — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 21:10:08 +0000

FrenchMottershead visited Bahia from January 7th to 27th to work on SHOPS, “an ongoing, international photographic project, uncovering communities formed by independent, local traders”. I worked with them as a writer/observer/cultural consultant and am currently writing an essay on that experience for the book they will publish in 2009. Here is their blog on the project so far: shopsproject.blogspot.com

10 Feb 08 – They’ve just added a “making links” blog

Yemanjá Festival on Itaparica

hsgledhill — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:24:56 +0000

Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending a very special Yemanjá Festival in Barra Grande, on the island of Itaparica. This year, February 3rd fell during Carnival, so the festivities were significantly reduced. Even so, they were beautiful and deeply moving. Here are some of the photos I thought best captured the event (just click on the photo to see the slideshow).

Yemanjá Day on Itaparica – 03.02.08

Short stories in Portuguese

hsgledhill — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:35:46 +0000

O Homem que Amava Acarajé

Bilinguarudos de Quenbori