Building on the 20th-Century Latin American Design course, Focus Latin America is a graduate seminar series examining the history of design and material culture in a specific Latin American country or region. This iteration centers on Brazil, exploring the socio-political, economic, and cultural forces that have shaped its material production from the late nineteenth century to the present. The seminar considers how Brazilian creators have negotiated modernity, nationalism, race, regionalism, and industrialization within the context of colonial legacies, migration, and rapid urbanization. Topics include modernism and its afterlives; the relationship between vernacular, Indigenous, and Afro-Brazilian practices and projects of cultural institutionalization; postwar architecture and urbanism; Tropicália; industrial design and print culture across local and transnational networks; and the intersections of fashion, performance, and identity construction. Students will engage Brazilian and Latin American theoretical frameworks and complete a final curatorial project grounded in object-centered research.