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Free and open to the public. There will be a public reception with complimentary food and drinks at 1 PM. The lecture will start at 2 PM.In this talk, visiting scholar Patrícia Vieira will describe the main features of the extractivist paradigm that has dominated the Western approach to the Amazon River Basin as a source of material and immaterial commodities: as a repository of rubber, minerals, and oil, as the “lungs of the world,” as a “carbon sink,” and as a storehouse of biodiversity that can be used for scientific and medical purposes. Professor Vieira will then suggest alternative views of the rainforest and, through Indigenous literature and art, show how Amazonian peoples see their region as a place of entangled lives, where plants, animals, waters, spirits, and other beings form interspecies communities.
Professor Vieira is a research professor at the Center for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra in Portugal, where she leads the ECO-Amazon project, which gives voice to animals and plants and reveals the interdependence of humans and more-than-humans. During the spring 2026 semester, she is serving as the Hélio and Amélia Pedroso/Luso-American Development Foundation Endowed Chair in Portuguese Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.
She is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including such titles as The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence and The Language of Plants, as well as dozens of book chapters, journal articles, and op-eds. She has delivered invited talks around the world.
Event Address
UNE, Biddeford Campus
Harold Alfond Forum, Room 283
630 Pool Street
Biddeford, ME 04005
United States
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Event Venue
University of New England Harold Alfond Forum, 1 Noreaster Way, Biddeford, ME 04005, United States
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