Residency Period: 01/03/2013 to 28/02/2014
Professor Luis Alberto Brandão is a researcher at CNPq and a full professor at the Faculty of Letters of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), where he has been working since 1996 in the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Programs in Literary Studies. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature (1996) and a Master’s in Brazilian Literature (1992) from UFMG. He completed postdoctoral studies at the University of São Paulo (2004-2005) and at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (2010-2011). He is the leader of the research group Literary and Transdisciplinary Spaces. Essayist and fiction writer, he has published, among others, the books Grafias da identidade: literatura contemporânea e imaginário nacional (Finalist for the Jabuti Prize in the literary theory/criticism category), Um olho de vidro: a narrativa de Sérgio Sant’Anna (National Literature Prize for the City of Belo Horizonte, essay category), Chuva de letras (João-de-Barro National Literature Prize, Finalist for the Jabuti Prize, Book selected for the PNBE 2011, National School Library Program, of the MEC), Manhã do Brasil (Finalist for the Portugal Telecom Prize and Finalist for the São Paulo Literature Prize), Saber de pedra: o livro das Estátuas (Vitae Arts Grant: literature) and Tablados: book of books.
SPACE AS A TRANSDISCIPLINARY CATEGORY
The project “Space as a transdisciplinary category” aims to investigate, from a metatheoretical and comparative perspective, fundamental questions related to the ways in which the category space is used in some areas of knowledge. Based on the diversity of functions and meanings attributed to the category within the scope of Literary Theory, the aim is to critically assess how this diversity manifests itself in the following areas: Philosophy, Physics, Architecture and Urbanism, Geography, Semiotics, Linguistics, Art Theory (other areas may be incorporated into the investigation, based on contact with the respective researchers). The aim is in particular to: a) evaluate the parameters that, in each area, validate the term as a concept, as well as the historical variations of such parameters; b) investigate the existence of conceptual lines of force that, in the conformation of the category space, are common to more than one area; c) evaluate to what extent these lines of force are inserted in broader theoretical traditions, which may represent comparable paradigms of knowledge, d) analytically link the ways of approaching space in each area to the epistemological assumptions – definition of objects of study, circumscription of the conceptual field, establishment of research methodologies – that govern it; e) investigate the existence of incipient or little-known possibilities for theoretical treatment of space in each area, questioning to what extent they constitute expansions of already consolidated possibilities.