1998 | ||
annually | ||
Portuguese, English, and Spanish | ||
Literature, History, Political Science, International Relations, Cinema and Media Studies, Economics, Health |
||
1517-0152 | ||
Instituto de Letras da Universidade Federal Fluminense – Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro – BRAZIL | ||
Contracapa Editora, Rio de Janeiro | ||
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. |
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