This project examines the literature process of non-literary discourses of historic representation, the construction of national and regional identities, the social role of intellectuals and their relationship with power, structural heterogeneity and its relation towards cultural heterogeneity, the discussion over rights and citizenship, the relation between literature and public spaces, regional, national, transnational, and trans-cultural signification and the reception of this and other key pieces of Latin American literature.

The project concentrates on the work of Os Sertões, who examines issues of border cultures and cultural borders in a survey of diverse regions to reveal the peculiarities of the sertão: the Amazons, Indians, caboclos, as well as the gauchos on the lowland plain in the south of Brazil. He explores how the development of these regional cultures runs counter to the development of national identities.