Session Information
29 SES 01 B, Researching Oneself – Popular Cultures and the Building of Knowledge at the University
Research Workshop
Contribution
The workshop focuses on creating opportunities within the university environment to acknowledge the importance of and value all the knowledge produced by popular culture, by means of personal experience with Brazilian popular dances.
For 33 years now I have had the very pleasurable mission to work helping many students realize the rich legacy made out of art and culture that identifies us as a nation.
I have done this through researching and teaching university level classes in Dance Theory and Physical Education programs at theRio de JaneiroFederalUniversity(UFRJ).
Researching Oneself aims at building a repertoire of pedagogical tools. The workshop motivates the investigation of genealogies. It encourages the student-researcher to (re)discover him or herself by interviewing family members, searching for birth places or old addresses, revisiting the history of different human movements – migration, rites of passage, inheritance and creation in art –which perpetuate and attest the dynamics of cultural traditions. The methodology uses as a starter the folk narratives intertwined with the participants’ life narratives, encompassing facts, people and objects put together by selective personal emotions and attached to emotional times and spaces. The guiding principle is to search for examples of collective encounters and des-encounters which have created the history of different communities or nations -- a history which is carried in people’s bodies. It is memory in movement, memory eternally being built, woven with symbols and multiple feelings and, somehow, always visible in everyday life. The awareness about the importance of the popular cultures in the process of building the official knowledge at the university narrows the relationship between reality and human creativity which daily coexists with and remains open to diversity and the necessity to educate towards tolerance, an attitude so important for Latin America and for all the world as well.
In 2005, the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) has adopted the Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions which proposes that all countries have autonomy to elaborate, encourage and promote their own cultural policies as a way to safeguard cultural diversity in times of massive globalization. The Convention, ratified by many countries in 2006, intends to guarantee all nations the rights to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions within their territory. The document presents as measures to do it the encouragement and protection of cultural diversity, raising awareness of its value at the local, national and international levels; bringing new light upon the ways of living, expressing the roots and the symbolic meaning of cultural content which is ritualistic and rich in ancestral artistic ways of expression.
This workshop uses playful activities chosen among the different types and motivations of Brazilian popular dances and calls attention to the role of universities on this matter dialoguing with the academic communities which will be present at ECER 2013.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
BRANDÃO, Carlos Rodrigues (2005). “Viver de criar cultura, cultura popular, arte e educação”. In: Boletim Salto para o Futuro- Linguagens Artísticas da Cultura Popular. Rio de Janeiro: TV Escola, março. CANCLINI, Néstor García (2000). Culturas Híbridas - estratégias para entrar e sair da modernidade. São Paulo: EDUSP. CASCUDO, Luís da Câmara (1983). Cultura e Sociedade - Pesquisas e notas de Etnografia Geral. Belo Horizonte: Editora Itatiaia Limitada. GABRIEL, Eleonora (2003). “Escorrego mas não caio é o jeito que o corpo dá” - as danças folclóricas como expressão artística de identidade e alegria. Niterói: UFF. Dissertação de Mestrado em Ciência da Arte-IACS. HALL, Stuart (2002). A identidade cultural na pós-modernidade São Paulo: DP&A Editora. FREIRE, Paulo (1984). Ação Cultural para a Liberdade. Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terra. MARTINS, Carlos Henrique dos Santos (2005). “Cultura popular urbana e educação: o que a escola tem a ver com isso?”. In: Boletim Salto para o Futuro- Linguagens Artísticas da Cultura Popular. Rio de Janeiro: TV Escola, março.
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