The Portuguese & Lusophone-world Lecture Series, Kenneth David Jackson

The New Bedford Whaling Museum is honored to present Professor Kenneth David Jackson.

Professor Jackson's lecture will focus on the descendants of Portuguese on the East Coast of Sri Lanka, called "Portuguese Burghers" in Sri Lanka, who have lived in mixed communities near forts at Batticaloa and Trincomalee since the early 1600s. We will hear some of his field recordings of performances of music and folk verse in creole Portuguese with illustrations of the community.

ABOUT PROFESSOR JACKSON

Kenneth David Jackson is professor of Luso-Brazilian literatures and cultures at Yale University.

His books range from South Asia -- Sing Without Shame (1990) on Portuguese creole folklore in Sri Lanka and India – to Portugal, with Adverse Genres in Fernando Pessoa (2010), to Brazil, with Machado de Assis: A Literary Life (2015) and Cannibal Angels: Transatlantic Modernism and the Brazilian Avant-Garde (2022). His three CDs in “Journey of Sounds” were featured at EXPO ’98 in Lisbon. In November 2023 he was invited to the International Literary Festival of Paraty dedicated to Pagu with his new anthology of her journalism, “Palavras em Rebeldia.” Other conferences he has organized include “Goa: A post-colonial society between cultures” (2013), “Portuguese World Music” (2007), “Poetry Criticism Translation: Homage to 90 Years of Haroldo de Campos” (2019), and “Brazil 100/200” (2022). In 2024 he was invited to the Literary Festival of Macau on the 500 years of Camões. From 2024-27 he will again chair the Council on Latin American & Iberian Studies at Yale. He is a graduate of U. Wisconsin-Madison and cellist.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies of Brown University with support from FLAD - Luso-American Foundation, of Lisbon.