Founded In    1998
Published   annually
Language(s)   Portuguese, English, and Spanish
     

Fields of Interest

 

Literature, History, Political Science, International Relations, Cinema and Media Studies, Economics, Health

     
ISSN   1517-0152
     
Affiliated Organization   Instituto de Letras da Universidade Federal Fluminense – Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro – BRAZIL
     
Publisher   Contracapa Editora, Rio de Janeiro
     
Editorial Board

EDITORS
Paulo Knauss and Sonia Torres

ADVISORY BOARD

Ana Lúcia Gazolla
Ana Maria Mauad
Cecília Azevedo
Cristina Stevens
Eduardo Coutinho
Eduardo Rodrigues Gomes
Eliana Lourenço
George Yudice
Glaucia Renate Gonçalves
Heloísa Buarque de Hollanda
Heloisa Toller Gomes
Lucia Lippi Oliveira
Margara Averbach
Mary Ann Junqueira
Pedro Castillo
Ricardo Salvatore
Rita Terezinha Schmidt 
Roland Walter
Ruben George Oliven 
Ruth Dweck
Tunico Amancio
Vera do Val Galante

Submission Guidelines and Editorial Policies

Papers sent to Transit Circle are submitted to the Editorial Board, in order to establish their pertinence as to the profile and editorial line of the periodical, and are refereed by members of the Advisory Board as well as ad hoc specialists, as to content and quality of the collaboration.

Contents of published works express the opinions and conclusions of their authors. The submission of papers implies the concession of copyrights to Transit Circle, whose editors are not responsible for returning them to the author/s. Published texts may also be made available in different media, including the Internet.

Works may be presented in Portuguese, English or Spanish and should be sent to the address below, c/o Editorial Board of Transit Circle, in three (3) hardcopy versions (without author’s name) and one (1) electronic version (disk) with author’s name/institution to the right, below the title. Typescripts should not exceed 25 pages for essays and articles and 8 pages for book reviews, and should be formatted in Word for Windows, Times New Roman, typed to 12-pt; 1.18”margin all around; double-spaced. Footnotes, typed to 10-pt, should be in Arabic numerals and should contain complete bibliographical references, including edition, if not a 1st edition [example: ORTIZ, Renato. Mundialização e cultura. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1994, pp. 20-21]. Foreign words and book/journal titles should appear in italics; titles of articles in quotes [example: SYLVESTER, Christine. “African and Western Feminisms: World-traveling the Tendencies and Possibilities”. Signs, 20 (4): 941-969, 1995]. Abstracts should be no longer than 6 lines, in two of Transit Circle’s official languages, and should appear immediately below the title/author/s name/s and Institution/s. Charts, tables, illustrations etc must be sent on separate sheets and files; captions should also be sent on a separate sheet/file, and indications as to where they should be placed must appear in the body of the text.

Mailing Address:
Revista Transit Circle
a/c Editores
Instituto de Letras da Universidade Federal Fluminense
Av. Visc. Rio Branco, s/n
Campus do Gragoata’, bloco C – sala 518
Niteroi, RJ
cep: 24210-100
Brasil

     

Transit circle

The Brazilian journal of American studies

Transit Circle is a fully refereed interdisciplinary journal dedicated to publishing articles and reviews that present innovative and consistent theoretical reflections and that seek to expand research in American studies through a focus on the U.S. and its culture in the world, mapping new comparative, international, transnational, or hemispheric routes. The journal is currently being indexed in the MLA International Bibliography.

 

» Visit Journal Web Site

2005, 2005

Reformation and counter-reformation: epistemic shifts in American Studies at the beginning of the Twenty-first Century


This position paper on the current status of American Studies as institutional formation offers a diagnosis of the epistemological axioms that have historically defined the field through a spectrum of what the author identifies as the discipline’s “essential fallacy”. In doing so, the author offers a synoptic critique of internationalization as deployed from the center and an assessment of the epistemological shifts spearheaded by the International American Studies Association for a de-centered, non-hegemonic internationalism.

Vozes Solitárias


review of Contos Ingleses: os clássicos and Contos Norte-Americanos: os clássicos, anthologies published by Ediouro, Rio de Janeiro

Mecanismos de controle da burocracia nos Estados Unidos e no Brasil: similaridades e diferenças


The central theme of this article is the importance of accountability on the part of contemporary State bureaucracy, an issue that has been accentuated by the so-called regulating agencies. The authors analyze both the U.S. and Brazil – paradigmatic examples of presidentialism, a system of government in which Democratic control is more complex. In this comparative study, bureaucracy is analyzed through four prisms: the Executive, the Legislative, the Judiciary, and civil society. The text highlights the necessity of studying these powers both in their relationship and as forms of checks and balances. The authors conclude that, despite the institutional similarities between the U.S. and Brazil, the different socio-economic contexts bring about distinct results in terms of bureaucratic accountability, offering a critique of more formalist institutional visions.

O comparativo e o transnacional nos estudos dos Estados Unidos e do Brasil


This paper examines Brazilian and American historical studies as subjects linked not only comparable historical questions, but also by shared participation in transnational historical experiences. It develops the example of Brazil’s and the United States’ responses to decolonization in Africa and, in particular, their experience with the Portuguese Salazarist regime’s intransigence with regard to the independence of its colonies. This paper considers the ways in which racial identity helped shape the opportunities and constraints that policy makers and intellectuals in both Brazil and the United States experienced this context.

O Instituto de Assuntos Interamericanos e seu programa de saúde no Brasil: políticas internacionais, respostas locais


This article analyzes the history of the Institute of Inter-American Affairs (IAIA) and its health agreements in Brazil during the 1940s and 1950s. Created in 1942 and originally planned by the Americans as a temporary project for the war effort, the agreement was reoriented, in the new political juncture of the Cold War, in order to build public health in the underdeveloped regions, which were a target for Brazilian plans for national development.

Cinema no contexto da Guerra Fria (1948-1969) ou como transformar o comunismo em ameaça mundial


This article focuses on cinema joined to the Cold War context. How was it possible to transform the Soviet Union and Communism into world threats? The methodological approach is based on semiotic analyzes of films produced during the Cold War period.

Literature, imagination, and the supernatural: the debate over Carlos Castaneda


This article deals with the debate over the narrative of American anthropologist Carlos Castaneda and the problematic of his Yaqui informant Don Juan. It is the author’s contention that Castaneda’s narrative presents a blend of interdisciplinary discourses involving primarily literature and ethnography. He proposes the discussion of whether the traces of fictional narrative to be found in a supposedly ethnographic account are meant to work as a form of translation of sacred space, i.e., as a challenge at transcribing the unworldly, or simply as a means of representing the concept of power within shamanism as personal amoral gratification. The author argues that Castaneda’s narrative could be seen paradigmatic of the power of language not to originate the supernatural but, rather, given the use of certain literary techniques, to attempt to represent that which cannot be grasped by words alone.

A Liberdade Prometida: Comunidades Afro-Americanas na Flórida Colonial


review of Jane Landers’ Black Society in Spanish Florida

A Questão do “Antiamericanismo” no Oriente Médio


review of Stephen Kinzer’s All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror

O Encontro do Mercado com o Poder Político


review of José Luis Fiori’s [ed.] O Poder Americano