Professor Aparecida Vilaça
Aparecida Vilaça is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Vilaça studies socio-cultural changes among indigenous peoples in Brazil, with an emphasis on conversion to Christianity and schooling
| Aparecida Vilaça is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Vilaça studies socio-cultural changes among indigenous peoples in Brazil, with an emphasis on conversion to Christianity and schooling. She has carried out ethnographic research among the Wari’ people in Southwestern Amazonia for over three decades. Among other books she is the author of Strange Enemies: Indigenous Agency and Scenes of Encounters in Amazonia (Duke); Praying and Preying: Christianity in Indigenous Amazonia (California); Paletó and Me. Memories of my Indigenous Father (Stanford) and (with Geoffrey Lloyd) Of Jaguars and Butterflies. Metalogues on Issues in Anthropology and Philosophy (Berghahn). Vilaça’s current research focuses on science learning by Wari’ children and young people, exploring the ambiguities produced in the encounter between different ontologies, especially regarding the idea of nature. On this subject she has organized, since 2017, with Geoffrey Lloyd and Willard MacCarty an interdisciplinary biannual seminar on non-Western sciences at Cambridge University (NRI). As an outcome, she co-edited, with Geoffrey Lloyd the book Science in the Forest, Science in the Past (Hau/Chicago) and with Geoffrey Lloyd and Willard MacCarty, a second collection entlited Science in the Forest, Science in the Past. Further interdisciplinary explorations (Routledge). Vilaça is also interested in fiction writing about Indigenous Amazonian Peoples’ lives as a way to reach a wider audience for the creative and beautiful ideas of these people. She co-authored, with Francisco V. Gaspar, a collection of short-stories, Ficções Amazônicas (Todavia, 2022) Vilaça has been a Visiting Scholar at the universities of Cambridge, Bergen, México, Stanford, Princeton and École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris). She was nominated for the Simon Bolivar Chair at CLAS, Cambridge, starting next October. At Clare Hall, Aparecida will be accompanied for some periods of her stay by her parter, Professor Carlos Fausto, an Amazonianist from the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro |
Select publications
BOOKS
- Strange Enemies. Indigenous Agency and Scenes of Encounter in Amazonia. Duke University Press (2010)
- Praying and Preying.Christianity in Indigenous Amazonia. University of California Press (2016)
- Paletó and Me. Memories of my Indigenous Father. Stanford University Press (2021)
- (With Geoffrey Lloyd) Of Jaguars and Butterflies. Metalogues on issues in anthropology and philosophy. New York and Oxford: Berghahn
EDITED BOOKS - Science in the forest, Science in the past. Chicago: Chicago University Press/Hau books. Edited with Geoffrey Lloyd
ARTICLES
- “The devil and the secret life of numbers”Translations and transformation in Amazonia. HAU. Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (1-2): 6-19
- “Chronically unstable bodies. Reflections on Amazonian corporalities”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 11 (3): 445-464.
- “Making kin out of others in Amazonia”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 8 (2): 347-365.
Select awards
- 2007 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Latin American and Caribbean Appointments, 2007.
- 2020 – Award Casa de las Américas to the book Paletó e Eu. Memórias de meu pai indígena.
- 2022 – Independent Publisher Book Award. Gold medal in Creative Nonfiction, to Paletó and Me. Memories of my Indigenous Father. Redwood: Stanford University Press.
Further links
https://ppgas.museunacional.ufrj.br/vilaccedila.html
CV: http://lattes.cnpq.br/0895615747444576
