Winter 2001-2002
Arenas Scholarship Rooted in Family History
Photo by Diana Watters
FERNANDO ARENAS
Education
Ph.D. 1994, U of California, Berkeley
M.A. 1988, U of California, Berkeley
B.A. 1986, Northern Arizona U
Professional history
1995-present: faculty, Spanish and Portuguese, U of M
1994-1995: faculty of modern and classical languages, U of San Francisco
Selected honors & awards
Bush Early Career Faculty Program: Pursuing Teaching Excellence in a Multicultural University, 2000-2001
U of Minnesota Grant-in-Aid in Research, Artistry, and Scholarship, 1999-2000
Outstanding Teaching Award, U of California, Berkeley, 1989
Outstanding Teaching Award, Northern Arizona U, 1983 and 1984
Selected publications
Being on Edge: Nations, Subjects and Utopias in Contemporary Portuguese and Brazilian Cultures. U of Minnesota Press. Forthcoming
Lusosex: Nations, Sexualities, and Genders in Portuguese-Speaking Cultures (with Susan Quinlan, coeditor). U of M Press. Forthcoming.
Notable feat
Arenas not only speaks Spanish (his native tongue), Portuguese, and English, but also approaches native fluency in French and Italian.
On Election Day 2001, Fernando Arenas is teaching his honors students about cinema in the Portuguese-speaking world. Within minutes, the chalkboard is filled. Arenas teaches with his body. He snaps his fingers. He gestures with his hands. He points. He arches his eyebrows. He nods his head.
Through it all, his red "I VOTED" sticker stands out on his dress-casual blue shirt, a reminder of an important duty for citizens of a democracy. But to Arenas, another critical component of citizenship is understanding cultures around the world.
There is nothing new in arguing for a multi-cultural education, Arenas says, but "It's particularly urgent now"-now, after the September 11 terrorist attack.
In discussing the events of that day with his students, Arenas noticed a subtle, but significant, difference between his two classes-a difference that he believes reinforces the importance of a liberal education. Students in both classes were profoundly hurt and shocked. But while students in his introductory course knew little about the broader historical and political context of the attacks, the students in his honors seminar, all of whom had studied abroad, had a more sophisticated understanding.
"The tenor of our discussion was very different," Arenas says. "The students who had studied abroad were aware of the perceptions people have of the United States, that the United States is not always loved."
Using the new world circumstances as a teaching opportunity, Arenas asked his students in the introductory class to research coverage of the terrorist attack in Latin American newspapers. "That's one way to have the students look outside the United States, to see how the U.S. is seen," Arenas says. "I think that's part of our mission as professors of liberal arts, to instill geopolitical and historical awareness. We can [help students] see themselves through the filter of other cultures, kind of like a mirror being held for them, but that mirror is not an American mirror necessarily."
Arenas' life is a testament to multi-culturalism. Born in New York City to Colombian parents, he moved with his family to Bogota, Colombia, when he was seven, and later returned to New York.
As a boy, Arenas heard the Bossa Nova music emanating from his father's record player. But that was about all he knew of Portuguese culture until, as an undergraduate at Northern Arizona University, he began making annual trips to Europe. His curiosity ignited, he visited Portugal for the first time when he was 19.
"I had no idea it would become my livelihood," he says. "I didn't know anything about it, and I wanted to know. It seemed like such an obscure culture."
Arenas came to the University of Minnesota in 1995 after completing his doctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley. His arena of study is all Portuguese-speaking countries, which he can count on both hands: Portugal, Brazil, and five African countries, all once part of Portugal's global empire. Today these countries are connected by history, culture, and necessity. "They find themselves in a marginal position in the world today," says Arenas.
Arenas's deepening understanding of the culture he once knew so little about is finding its way into a book scheduled for release in fall 2003--Being on the Edge: Nation, Subjects and Utopias in Portuguese and Brazilian Cultures. In the book, he says, "I look into ways that national identities have been redefined in Portugal and Brazil in the twentieth century."
What especially fascinates Arenas is how Brazil, a country that Portugal colonized in 1500, has become by far the largest and most influential Portuguese-speaking country in the world. While Portugal is a rich, stable nation in the European Union, it relies heavily on its former colony for culture and popular music.
Arenas notes that among the lessons U.S. students can learn from other cultures is an understanding of how to ease racial and ethnic tensions-an issue that Brazil has been dealing with for 500 years. It's estimated that 4 million African slaves were brought to Brazil by the Portuguese, initiating the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Now, 40 to 60 percent of the Brazilian population is of partial African descent. Brazil has been more successful than the United States in handling this cultural diversity, says Arenas.
To learn from other cultures is to benefit from research, says Arenas, who believes that teaching and research are intertwined.
"I think what I do in terms of research can enrich the classroom, and being in the classroom puts a lot of my ideas to the test," he says. "Students can contribute to my own reflections."