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[Veritas] Prof. Jeffrey Lesser (Emory University) - A Building Blockof Health: Mapping Immigration and Health in Brazil
Feb 21, 2025  |  Read: 370

 

Dear all, 
The Veritas Research Institute will host a lecture by Prof. Jeffrey Lesser (Emory University), followed by dinner, on Tuesday, March 4 from 4.15 to 6.00pm. Details as follows: 
 
A Building Block of Health:  Mapping Immigration and Health in Brazil
Prof. Jeffrey Lesser (Emory University) 
 
Tuesday, March 4, 4.15 - 6.00pm
Daewoo Hall Annex 205
 
An abstract is included below. 
 
Jeffrey Lesser is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History at Emory University. His research focuses on the relationships between immigration, ethnicity, and national identity. His new book Living and Dying in São Paolo: Immigrants, Health and the Built Environment in Brazil  (Duke University Press / Editora UNESP, 2025) focuses on a multi-ethnic, working class, neighborhood to analyze how the state creates and enacts health policies and asks why different immigrant groups often generate similar responses to state actions. Prof. Lesser is also the author of a series of prize-winning books published in English, Portugese, Japanese, and Hebrew: A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese-Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy (Duke University Press/Editora Paz e Terra); Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Duke University Press/Editora UNESP/Akashi Shoken); and Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (University of California Press/Imago/Tel Aviv University).

If you would like attend the event, please RSVP by completing the following Google Form no later than 4pm on Wednesday, February 26: 
 
 
 
Best wishes, 
 
Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen 
Director, Veritas Research Center
 
 
Abstract: 
There is a saying in Brazil that “Mosquitos are democratic: they bite the rich and the poor alike.”  While insects generally do not have a highly developed sense of class consciousness, diseases, from Covid-19 to yellow fever to dengue to tuberculosis to hypertension, do differentially affect Brazilians of different classes and races.  One ramification of these variations was and is that state sponsored health programs often create conflictual interactions with the public.  This seminar will discuss how digital humanities approaches, combined with archival and ethnographic data, allows us to see the built environment of buildings and streets as critical to the relationship between immigrant patients, healthcare workers, and health policies.  My focus is on the neighborhood of Bom Retiro, in Sao Paulo, a long-time textile focused area, where residents in the 19th century were immigrants from Southern Europe. Today, immigrants primarily from Bolivia and Paraguay live and work in tenements and unregistered micro-factories, often owned by Korean immigrants.

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