Ribeira, técnica versus natureza: transformações em prol de um projeto de modernização (1860-1932)

The necessity of the insertion of the capital of Rio Grande do Norte in the world-wide commercial scene and its claim as the seat of political power, in ends of nineteenth and beginning of twentieth century, determined the direction of urban interventions undertaken by government to restructure the city. In that matter, there were several actions of improvements and embellishment in Natal, which had, as a starting point, the adequacy works of the port, located in the Ribeira quarter, with the aim of ending the physical isolation that reinforced its economic stagnation. Besides the problems faced in the opening bar of the Potengi River, and would complement the required improvements, other barriers demonstrate the tension established between the physic-geographic field and the man: the flooded and slope which connected Cidade Alta and Ribeira the first two quarters of the city.The execution of these works demanded knowledge whose domain and application it was for engineering. But, how the actions done for the engineers, in sense to transform natural areas into constructed spaces made possible the intentional conformation of the quarter of the Ribeira in a commercial and politician-administrative center, in the middle of the XIX century and beginning of the XX? Understand, therefore, the employment effects of technology on the physical-geographical Ribeira, is the objective of this work that uses theoretical and methodological procedures of Urban Environmental History, by analyzing the relationship between the environment and the man, mediated by knowledge and use of technologies. The documental research was used, as primary sources, the Messages of the Provincial Assembly Government that later became the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Norte reports and articles on specialized publications, in addition to local newspapers. The work is structured in five chapters. First, some comments about Urban Environmental History (Chapter 1) supplemented with analysis of the conceptual construction of nature in the Contemporary Era and its application in the city (chapter 02), the following chapters (03 and 04) deal with the rise of engineers as a active group in the Brazilian government frameworks and their vision about the nature inside the urban environment and it is studied how the professional technicians dealt with the improvement work of the harbor and in the shock with the natural forces. Other works that would complement this "project" of modernization and had had natural obstacles to be removed the Ribeira flood and slope constitute the subject of the fifth chapter. Finally, some final considerations retake the initial discussions aiming an association between the technique and the nature as junction elements inside the process of constitution of a Modern Natal

Entre fronteiras: a escrita imigrante de Julia Alvarez em How the García girls lost their Accents

This master s thesis aims at investigating the way in which diasporic subjects in the novel How the García Girls Lost their Accents (1992) cope with the clash of two cultures the Caribbean one, from the Dominican Republic, and the North-American one, from the U.S., as well as the implications of such negotiations in the lives of immigrants, once it apparently depicts the plight of those who are torn between mother-lands and mother-tongues (IYER, 1993, 46). At the same time, the implications of such negotiations in the lives of immigrants are relevant issues in the writing of Julia Alvarez. For this, there is the analysis of the uses of family memories as one of the main strategies immigrant writers possess to recall their identities. Moreover, this thesis will also consider the language issue for the construction of the immigrant identity insofar as bilingualism is a key factor in the negotiation the García girls must effect between their Caribbean and their American halves in order to understand where they stand in the contemporary world. In order to build a theoretical framework that supports this master s thesis, we list the works of Homi K. Bhabha (1990, 1996, 2003, 2005), Stuart Hall (2001, 2003), Julia Kristeva (1994), Salman Rushdie (1990, 1994), Sonia Torres (2001, 2003) among other contributions that were crucial to the completion of this academic research

Pelo escuro: a poesia afro-brasileira de Oliveira Silveira

O presente estudo traz uma reflexão sobre os discursos culturais afro-brasileiros e o lugar ocupado pela poesia em meio a uma sociedade racista. A pesquisa tem como propósito fazer um estudo da poesia de Oliveira Silveira (1968, 1970, 1977, 1981, 1987). Leva-se em consideração a relação da produção poética de Oliveira com as propostas do movimento da Negritude e o diálogo lúcido que o mesmo estabelece com poetas vinculados ao referido movimento e como Silveira sugere dentro da literatura a negritude como uma forma de intersecção na poesia brasileira. A proposta aqui apresentada observa também o hibridismo na poética de Oliveira Silveira ao se enfatizar um olhar sobre uma escrita comovida pelo traço do entre-lugar do discurso. Analisa-se a caracterização de uma literatura gerada pelo tom de denúncia ao desconstruir historicamente o que há muito tempo se estabelece como democracia racial . Em cumplicidade com a poesia regional do Rio Grande do Sul, a poesia de Oliveira vem permeada pela diversidade de ritmos que traduzem o legado da cultura negra mundo afora. Essa pesquisa sustenta-se nos estudos de Eduardo de Assis Duarte (2005, 2011) e Kabengelê Munanga (2008, 2009) sobre Negritude e Identidade na literatura afro-brasileira, que se caracteriza como um movimento de consciência pela reconstrução ou mesmo revisão histórica do que foi apagado no calabouço dos navios negreiros. As leituras de Eduardo de Assis Duarte fomentam novos questionamentos, põem em dúvida a existência de uma identidade essencialista. Aponta-se nessa travessia para uma pluralidade de identidades, construídas por inúmeros grupos culturais na encruzilhada dos diversos momentos históricos. Analisam-se, portanto, a partir da crítica que Stuart Hall (2011) faz ao considerar as ideias de diásporas, as fronteiras das margens no universo da pós-colonização. Por fim, há uma encruzilhada ao se pensar a partir de Kabengelê Munanga, o discurso da negritude e da identidade negra nas relações sociais e culturais afrodescendentes

Maus ares e malária: entre os pântanos de Natal e o feroz mosquito africano (1892-1932)

The development of epidemiological practices in the last years of the nineteenth and early twentieth century was characterized by both an influence of medical geography and the emergence of microbes and vectors of diseases. Both theories were used to explain outbreaks in Rio Grande do Norte specially in Natal. In this process were organized new institutions linked to public health, unhealthy spaces and prescribed hygiene measures. The redefinitions of the spaces were linked to updated elements of Hippocratic medicine such as aerism and emphasis on medical topography. How the physicians of the town were organized in the face of new meanings and fields of expertise in the demarcation of diseases and regulation of their own practices against the illegal medical practitioners? Likewise, the very occurrence of epidemics mobilized people, urban institutions and apparatuses. But how the Hippocratic legacy that leads to the idea of bad air originated by swamps from the eighteenth and nineteenth century has been linked to new microbial assumptions and disease vectors in the early twentieth century? How an invader from Africa, (the mosquito A. gambiae) mobilized transnational efforts to combat malaria and redefined the epidemiological practices? The aim of this work is to understand how epidemiological practices redefine the way we define spaces, practices and disease from both an approach influenced by a relational history of spaces and a theoretical synergy which includes topics in Science Studies, Post Structuralist Geography and some elements of Feminist Studies. Documentary research were surveyed in the reports of the provincial presidents, government posts to the Provincial Assembly, specialized medical articles and theses, and documents from the Rockefeller Foundation and national and international journals. In this regard shall be given to both material and discursive aspects of space-related practical epidemiological that Natal as much (in general) Rio Grande do Norte between bad air and malaria.