David Faflik – Department of English
Based on the speaker’s recent Fulbright residence in Brazil, this talk will focus on his book project titled Plus Minas: Profiles in Brazil’s Beautiful Game. Plus Minas is not “about” futebol, the sport that Brazilians call jogo bonito, “the beautiful game.” Rather, the presenter is offering a sports-inflected meditation on life, death, work, and play in contemporary Brazil amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As sweeping as these topics sound, it would be an exaggeration to say that Faflik’s book advances a grand theory of Latin American affect. What he promises instead is a micro-history of the emotions, as he interrogates how play feels at a cultural moment when so many people around the world are working, dying, or both.
Plus Minas accordingly chronicles the emotions that football inspires among a given people at a particular time in a specific place. Here, the focus is with the professional footballers who have recently and historically plied their trades with the Belo Horizonte side Clube Atlético Mineiro (CAM), two-time champions of Brazil’s national domestic football league, or Brasileirão. This research is funded in part by a Center for Humanities Humanities Faculty Research Grant.