What if the Amazon rainforest could speak? What if it wasn’t just something we look at from afar or use for its resources, but a place full of human, plant and animal voices? And what if literature, film, and art could help us hear these voices that we usually ignore? These questions are at the heart of ECO – Animals and Plants in Cultural Productions about the Amazon River Basin. This international project, based at the University of Coimbra in Portugal and funded by the European Research Council, brings together researchers and artists to rethink how we understand the Amazon and the human relationship with nature. At a time when the Amazon is often in the news because of deforestation, fires, mining, oil drilling, and climate change, ECO focuses on listening to the many beings that live there.

A key idea of the project is that plants and animals are not just background elements. In many Indigenous Amazonian traditions, they are seen as living beings with their own ways of thinking, sensing, and acting. They are not separate from humans, but part of the same shared world. ECO looks at how these ideas appear in books, poems, films, and other forms of art. For instance, what would it mean for a novel to treat a river as an active presence, not just a setting? Or for a poem or a film to show the world from a plant’s or an animal’s point of view?

The project uses a term called “zoophytography” to describe how plants and animals leave their mark on human culture. While the word may sound complex, the idea is simple: human culture is deeply connected to the living world around us. Our stories and artworks are shaped by the environments we live in and by the many forms of life we encounter. This way of thinking challenges the common idea that humans are separate from nature. Instead, it shows that culture is never just human; it is always shaped by other living beings too.

ECO also highlights the importance of Indigenous knowledge. The Amazon is often imagined as untouched wilderness, but, in reality, Indigenous peoples have shaped its ecosystems for thousands of years. Their deep knowledge of plants, animals, and landscapes has helped maintain the region’s rich biodiversity. However, this knowledge has often been overlooked. By engaging with Indigenous perspectives, ECO aims to bring greater recognition to these ways of understanding the world, something that is especially relevant today as we look for better ways to address climate change and environmental issues.

The project also reaches beyond academia. It organizes exhibitions, workshops, courses, and public talks for wider audiences. One example is the online exhibition Politics and Poetics of the Rainforest, which features contemporary Amazonian art inspired by Indigenous ideas. These works invite people to experience the rainforest not just intellectually, but emotionally and through their senses.

In the end, ECO encourages us to see the Amazon differently, not as a distant or exotic place, but as a complex web of relationships where humans, plants, animals, and other beings are all connected. It also raises a broader question: if we learn to listen more carefully to the many forms of life around us, could we find better ways of living together on a planet with limited resources? In a world facing unprecedented environmental challenges, this question feels more urgent than ever.

–Patricia Vieira (Researcher Professor at the Center for Social Studies at Coimbra U. and former Hélio and Amélia Pedroso/Luso-American Development Foundation Endowed Chair in Portuguese Studies at Spring 2026)

For more information about our programs, visit our website at: https://www.umassd.edu/cas/portuguese/ or contact
Prof. Dário Borim at dborim@umassd.edu