Sarah Sarzynski, Ph.D.
Department
Areas of Expertise
Teaching Interests
Amazonia, Latin America, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Cultural/Media Studies, Indigenous Studies, Borderlands, Oral History, Environmental History, Race/Ethnicity, Feminist Pedagogy
Research Interests
My current book project - tentatively titled Colonizing Amazonia: A History of Conflict and Survival in the Borderlands - examines colonization projects in the Three Borders region (Brazil, Colombia, Peru) in the XX and XXI centuries. My research reveals how foreign-local collaborations in the Amazonian borderlands (forced and voluntary) have forged admixture while also producing violent conflicts for land, resources and power. I privilege borderlands peoples' experiences and perspectives over those of the nation-state, examining the collaborations between foreigners and local peoples (Indigenous and non-Indigenous).
Research and Publications
Revolution in the Terra do Sol: The Cold War in Brazil. (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, May 2018)
“Before They Were Ecologically Noble Savages: Gendered Representations of Amazonian Peoples and Nature in the 1970s.” Latin American Perspectives, 48: 237, no. 2 (March 2021): 47-62.
“Reading the Cold War from the Margins: Literatura de Cordel as a Historical Prism,” The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History, 75:1 (January 2018): 127-153.
“Documenting the Social Reality of Brazil: Roberto Rossellini, the Paraíban Documentary School and the Cinemanovistas.” In Global Neorealism, 1930-1970. The Transnational History of a Film Style, eds. Saverio Giovacchini and Robert Sklar. (University Press of Mississippi, 2011): 209-225
“The Popular, the Political and the Ugly: Brazilian Nordesterns in a Comparative Cold War Context, 1960 – 1976.” In Rethinking Third Cinema: The Role of Anti-Colonial Media and Aesthetics in Postmodernity, eds. Frieda Ekotto and Adeline Koh. (Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2009): 81-105.