Hitchin's generalized complex geometry has been shown to be relevant in compactifications of superstring theory with fluxes and is expected to lead to a deeper understanding of mirror symmetry. Gualtieri's notion of generalized complex submanifold seems to be a natural candidate for the description of branes in this context. Recently, we introduced a field theoretic realization of generalized complex geometry, the Hitchin sigma model, extending the well known Poisson sigma model. In this paper,

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... exploiting Gualtieri's formalism, we incorporate branes into the model. A detailed study of the boundary conditions obeyed by the world sheet fields is provided. Finally, it is found that, when branes are present, the classical Batalin--Vilkovisky cohomology contains an extra sector that is related non trivially to a novel cohomology associated with the branes as generalized complex submanifolds.