Amazon Lab Launches with Film Series and Reading Group

Monday, October 18, 2021
Amazon Lab Logo

Along with co-directors Christine Folch, Gustavo Furtado, and Paul Baker, we are excited to announce the launch of the Amazon Lab at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute this fall. The lab was previously scheduled to launch in 2020 but was delayed due to the pandemic. (You can read our initial announcement of the lab here.)

Subscribe to the Amazon Lab’s listserv to keep updated about our events, which include the following:

The Amazon Film Series features films by women and transgender filmmakers in the Amazon. The first film screening will be The Fever (A Febre, Brazil, 2019, 98 min.) at 5 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, November 3 (more info here.)

a flier with the heading “Amazon Film Series: New Films on the Amazon Region” on top, with three film posters in the middle, from left to right: “November 3, 5-7pm EDT, The Fever (2019)” Image of a construction worker wearing a hard hat and a yellow vest, with his eyes closed, against a blue background and a stack of container at a container shipping yard. “December 1, 5-7pm EDT (Double Screening): Heat (2018) and Yarang Mamin (2019)” Image of a film poster for “Heat,” “a film by Mari Correa” with red-tinted images of an Indigenous older woman and an Indigenous younger boy, and images of fruit on a tree. Image of a film poster for “Yarang Mamin: movimento das mulheres Yarang, un filme de Kamatxi Ikpeng,” with images of five dark brown-skinned, black-haired Indigenous people sitting in a circle, harvesting leaves in baskets. The bottom of the flier has the text: “All films livestreamed via Zoom, register @ cutt.ly/AmazonFilm” and “Amazon Lab at the Franklin Humanities Institute.”

A graduate student-led reading group will meet twice a month to discuss readings from a variety of fields and disciplines that deal with the Amazon and related topics.

The lab will hold a writing workshop for graduate students on Wednesday, November 17, which will complement a book talk by Amanda M. Smith, “Imagining Amazonia Cartographically,” on the relationships between mapping, extractivism, and literature in the Amazon region. 

a flier with header of “Imagining Amazonia Cartographically” on the top above an image of a rubber tree forest in color with green leaves, and with a book cover that has rubber trees in black and white and the title of the book “Mappign the Amazon: Literary Geography after the Rubber Boom,” Amanda M. Smith. In the middle of the page, a small drawing of a woman (Amanda M. Smith) reading a book. A gray box has the words: “A book talk with Amanda M. Smith (UC Santa Cruz) Nov. 17, 5-7pm EDT via Zoom. Amazon Lab at the Franklin Humanities Institute. Register @ cutt.ly/Imagining.”]

Later workshops will include a series on the natural and human history of plants in the Amazon, and a series on cultural memory in the Amazon, focusing on the preservation of language, cultural expression, and knowledge, interconnecting museums and activist movements. 

Click here to subscribe to the Amazon Lab’s listserv to receive updates about events and other opportunities.