{"id":156362,"date":"2014-08-23T19:08:31","date_gmt":"2014-08-23T22:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=156362"},"modified":"2014-09-24T18:30:47","modified_gmt":"2014-09-24T21:30:47","slug":"innovator-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/innovator-history\/","title":{"rendered":"An innovator of history"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Witter:

Eduardo Cesar<\/span>Witter: \u201cI have always been a good teacher. I learned to teach by giving classes in primary and secondary schools\u201dEduardo Cesar<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Historian Jos\u00e9 Sebasti\u00e3o Witter, professor emeritus at the USP Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences of the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (FFLCH-USP), passed away on July 7, 2014 at age 81, in Mogi das Cruzes, S\u00e3o Paulo. Witter graduated from FFLCH-USP with a major in history, and his advisor for his master\u2019s degree and PhD was department chair S\u00e9rgio Buarque de Holanda, who he served as assistant.<\/p>\n

As an expert on Brazilian history, over the course of his career, Witter published 15 books and numerous chapters in collective works and articles in specialized journals.\u00a0 He also wrote about cultural topics. Witter\u2019s research topics included German immigration, the founding of the first republican party, historical archives \u2013 and soccer. He headed the S\u00e3o Paulo State Public Archives from 1977 to 1987, the Institute of Brazilian Studies (USP) from 1990 to 1994 and the Paulista Museum (USP), better known as the Ipiranga Museum, from 1994 to 1999.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 de Souza Martins, Witter\u2019s friend and colleague as well as professor emeritus at FFLCH-USP and member of the FAPESP Board of Trustees, told Ag\u00eancia FAPESP that \u201cWitter was an exceptional innovator in the field to which he dedicated his life. He introduced something new into the culture of every institution he served in, working tirelessly for modernization and always taking on projects, without being held hostage to adversaries. He was also an innovative author and a pioneer in academic studies of soccer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Witter taught at a public school in Mogi das Cruzes and majored in history at USP with assistance from a special program established in the 1940s. This assistance allowed teachers who passed the USP entrance exam to take a leave of absence to enroll in a university-level course of study in their chosen field. Between the time he received his teaching degree and the time he was hired by the History Department at the invitation of S\u00e9rgio Buarque de Holanda, Witter taught in public schools, as mentioned in a <\/span>Pesquisa FAPESP<\/i> interview in June 2006. \u201cI have always been a good teacher; I have no false modesty. I learned to teach by giving classes at the primary and secondary level,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1970s, his innovation was the first academic treatment of soccer. As a professor in the FFLCH History Department, he taught the first course in the history of soccer at USP. Later, he organized works such as <\/span>Futebol e cultura <\/i>(Soccer and Culture), in cooperation with Jos\u00e9 Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy, and he wrote <\/span>O que \u00e9 futebol e Breve hist\u00f3ria do futebol brasileiro<\/i> <\/i>(About Soccer and a Brief History of Brazilian Soccer). In addition to this coursework, he always taught Brazilian colonial, imperial and republican history at the undergraduate level.<\/span><\/p>\n

Witter worked to preserve and protect documentary collections and to upgrade historical archives. \u201cHe was a master of an innovative concept to protect and disseminate documentary collections, and he was very much responsible for the major improvement in the conditions for performing historical research in S\u00e3o Paulo State. Without him, we would, to a great extent, still have only the modest research conditions found here in the 1950s,\u201d Jos\u00e9 de Souza Martins said.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jos\u00e9 Sebasti\u00e3o Witter was a pioneer in studies of soccer","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1348],"tags":[241],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-156362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituary","tag-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156362"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=156362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}