{"id":504234,"date":"2024-02-20T14:39:23","date_gmt":"2024-02-20T17:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=504234"},"modified":"2024-02-20T14:47:58","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T17:47:58","slug":"through-a-new-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/through-a-new-lens\/","title":{"rendered":"Through a new lens"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a 2016 article in Revista Brasileira de Hist<\/em>\u00f3ria<\/em> (the Brazilian Journal of History), American historian Barbara Weinstein, from New York University (NYU), asks herself: \u201cAm I still a Brazilianist?\u201d In the article, she questions the usefulness of the label \u201cBrazilianist\u201d even though Brazil remains her primary field of research. The term is commonly used to denote a researcher who studies Brazil from outside the country, whether they are foreign or Brazilian by origin. By this definition, the study of Brazil can be considered a branch of the field commonly referred to in the US as \u201carea studies,\u201d with Brazilianists sitting alongside other \u201cLatin-Americanists\u201d such as \u201cMexicanists\u201d and \u201cCubanists.\u201d A Brazilianist is thus a person who conducts research on Brazil with the aim of explaining it to a foreign audience. Brazilian studies, more than other area studies, entail unique aspects that have brought the term \u201cBrazilianist\u201d into more common usage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is still a relevant designation, certainly more so than other Latin American specializations,\u201d Weinstein argues. \u201cAlthough it is very unlikely you can obtain a degree or find a job in the US that is devoted exclusively to the history of Brazil, it makes sense to specialize in the country within the broader framework of Latin American, African diaspora or other studies. It is easy to move between Spanish-speaking countries, for example, but Brazil has a different language, history, and a much vaster scale,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

Weinstein \u2014 who has authored books such as The Amazon rubber boom<\/em> (Stanford University Press, 1983); For social peace in Brazil<\/em> (University of North Carolina Press, 1996), which deals with social services created by industrialists in S\u00e3o Paulo, and The color of modernity<\/em> (Duke University Press, 2015), on the role of racial ideas in the making of S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s self-image \u2014 notes that Brazilian studies has made a departure from the previous century, when Brazilianists were focused on understanding the country as a whole and its own historical process. \u201cThe new generation is more concerned with broader themes and no longer focuses solely on the history of a single nation. This is why we may speak in terms of the history of the Atlantic World, of the African diaspora, of indigenous movements, and so on. These are topics that transcend national contexts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, researchers are unlikely to author a paper on \u201cthe history of gender relations in Brazil,\u201d for instance. \u201cWhy would they? What makes gender relations specific to Brazil?\u201d Instead, we might investigate the \u201chistory of women\u2019s suffrage in Brazil.\u201d \u201cIn this case, the focus would be on the way women\u2019s voting rights were won and evolved in the country, which cannot be fully understood by looking at Brazil alone and ignoring the international context,\u201d says Weinstein. \u201cThemes like this fall both within and outside the boundaries of a given country.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n \n \n \n <\/picture>Daniel Almeida<\/span><\/div>
\n

According to Weinstein, the end of the Cold War (1947\u20131991) led to declining US interest in Latin America and Brazil as the threat of Soviet expansion dissipated. On the other hand, it expanded the range of research interests across transnational themes such as slave trafficking, gender and race relations, and urban development. As a result, while previous generations of scholars were primarily historians \u2014 with some political scientists and economists tucked in \u2014 today, they also include geographers, anthropologists, and literary critics.<\/p>\n

These shifts in perspective raise questions about the continued usefulness of the term \u201cBrazilianist.\u201d American geographer Jeff Garmany, from the University of Melbourne in Australia, does not consider himself a Brazilianist despite doing research on urban issues in Brazil and having coauthored the book Understanding Contemporary Brazil<\/em> (Routledge, 2019) with American political scientist Anthony Pereira, director of the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University, in Miami.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never refer to myself as a Brazilianist, but others often do. As a geographer, my research interests are mainly in urban and political development, with a particular focus on inequality. My research has always been rooted in Brazil, and my work deals with international debates in political and urban theory within a Brazilian empirical context,\u201d he says. \u201cI believe the term Brazilianist is now used more often in reference to others\u2019 work than to an actual field of study.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the concept remains in current use, including in the Brazilian press, which will often consult foreign specialists on national issues. Behind the usage of the term is a historical process of both rivalry and extensive collaboration. In 1990, historian Jos\u00e9 Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy, a retired professor in the Department of History at the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Humanities at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (FFLCH-USP), published the book A col<\/em>\u00f4<\/em>nia brasilianista: Hist<\/em>\u00f3<\/em>ria oral da vida acad<\/em>\u00ea<\/em>mica<\/em> (The Brazilianist colony: an oral history of academic life; Nova Stella), in which he interviewed foreigners devoted to research on Brazil. In his book, Meihy refers to \u201canti-Brazilianism\u201d as a \u201cchildhood disease of Brazilian historiography\u201d and criticizes the resistance of Brazilian intellectuals to foreigners\u2019 research.<\/p>\n

Alongside historians, political scientists, and economists, today\u2019s Brazilianists also include geographers, anthropologists, and literary critics<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This resistance partly arose after the 1964 coup, when Brazilian scholars became more restricted in their access to public archives than their foreign counterparts. For instance, within just a few years of the coup, American historian Robert M. Levine (1941\u20132003), at the University of Miami, was given privileged access to documents from the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS), run by dictator Get\u00falio Vargas (1882\u20131954) from 1930 to 1945. This created a rift between Levine and his Brazilian colleagues, who complained of special treatment being given to a foreigner. However, the resulting book would nonetheless become one of the most important references for the Vargas period, although it was censored in Brazil until 1980.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, foreign scholars, often in collaboration with Brazilian peers, have played an important role not only in exposing the international community to new interpretations of Brazil but also in creating new research programs within the country. One such scholar was American economist Werner Baer (1931\u20132016) at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. From the 1960s to 1980s, he helped create graduate programs in several Brazilian universities, including USP, the University of Bras\u00edlia (UnB) and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), and was also a cofounder of the National Association of Graduate Programs in Economics (ANPEC).<\/p>\n

At that time, Brazil did not have an extensive and globally connected university system. Today, collaboration between Brazilian and foreign researchers is both more widespread and more necessary than ever, says Sidney Chalhoub, a Brazilian historian at Harvard University and president of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA). \u201cNo one can be taken seriously as a Brazilianist in the US, writing for US audiences, without drawing on research produced in Brazil and without thoroughly engaging with Brazilian academic literature,\u201d says Chalhoub, adding that part of BRASA\u2019s mission is to bridge the divide between foreigners and expatriates, on the one hand, and researchers based at Brazilian universities, on the other.<\/p>\n

Founded in 1992 as an offshoot from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), BRASA is the foremost organization devoted to promoting Brazilian studies abroad. \u201cBRASA does justice to the unique position Brazil holds on the continent,\u201d says Chalhoub. \u201cWithin LASA, Brazil is diluted. In Latin American history programs, Brazil accounts for only 10% or [fewer] of classes, even though it has 40% of the continent\u2019s territory and population. BRASA gives the country the prominence it deserves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Daniel Almeida<\/span><\/p>\n

American historian Kenneth Serbin, at the University of San Diego, California, who served as president of BRASA from 2006 to 2008 and has also headed the Brazil Section of LASA, says that \u201can association of Brazilianists serves to beget more Brazilianists,\u201d citing American political scientist Timothy Power of Oxford. \u201cThis was my mission as president of BRASA. How did I set out to achieve it? By encouraging others to do what I had done in 1986: visit Brazil,\u201d says Serbin. \u201cWe secured enough funding to establish a Brazil Initiation Scholarship (BIS), which funds two or three people visiting the country each year for field research.\u201d BRASA holds biennial congresses and sponsors awards programs, such as the Roberto Reis BRASA Book Award, for books on Brazil.<\/p>\n

In 2017, a European counterpart to BRASA \u2014 the Association of Brazilianists in Europe (ABRE) \u2014 was founded during the first European Congress of Brazilianists in Leiden, Netherlands. The initiative was led by Dutch Marianne Wiesebron, who holds the Chair of Brazilian Studies at Leiden University, and M\u00f4nica Raisa Schpun, a Brazilian historian from the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris. \u201cEuropean Brazilianists regularly collaborate with counterparts in Brazil, but often have never met. ABRE aims to change this,\u201d says Czech \u0160\u00e1rka Grauov\u00e1, the current president of ABRE and a professor of Portuguese literature at the University of Carolina in Prague. The ABRE currently has 237 researchers from 16 countries in Europe as members. The organization holds biennial congresses and awards an annual prize for the best doctoral thesis.<\/p>\n

Grauov\u00e1 believes that the main difference between Brazilianism in Europe and the United States is that, with its diversity of cultures, traditions, and languages, Europe produces a wider range of interpretations of Brazil. \u201cAt the 3rd International ABRE Congress in Prague, we had a panel on the reception of Machado de Assis [1839\u20131908] in different European countries. We learned a lot, not only about the different traditions but also about the wealth of possible interpretations within different contexts,\u201d she says. Grauov\u00e1 notes that the history of European Brazilianism has roots more in language and literature studies than in social sciences, in contrast to the American version.<\/p>\n

Meihy\u2019s book of interviews classifies Brazilianists into different generations, starting with \u201cThe Pioneers,\u201d who studied the country for a wide range of reasons, including personal interest. One of the earliest references to a Brazilianist in foreign academic publications is American Samuel Putnam (1892\u20131950), who translated Euclides da Cunha\u2019s (1866\u20131909) Os sert\u00f5<\/em>es<\/em> into English. In 1971, American historian C. Harvey Gardiner (1913\u20132000) wrote an article highlighting the role Putnam played in spreading interest in Brazil among US scholars. American anthropologist Charles Wagley (1913\u20131991) and historian Richard Morse (1922\u20132001) also represent this generation of Brazilianists.<\/p>\n

The second wave, dubbed \u201cChildren of Castro\u201d by Meihy, saw the term \u201cBrazilianist\u201d become widely used in the Brazilian media. This name stems from the US response to the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and Fidel Castro\u2019s (1926\u20132016) rise to power: to prevent the continued spread of communism in the region, the US State Department began funding research on countries in the region, with a particular focus on Brazil. The Ford and Tinker foundations and the Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC) created research grant programs for Latin American studies. Meanwhile, the US Congress passed the National Defense Education Act to fund studies in sensitive areas of the world, including Latin America. In an interview, Brazilian historian Jos\u00e9 Hon\u00f3rio Rodrigues (1913\u20131987) recalled receiving job offers from American universities, with salaries equivalent to that of a high-ranking general in Brazil.<\/p>\n

Many of the \u201cChildren of Castro\u201d were historians, including British Kenneth Maxwell from Harvard University and Americans Warren Dean (1932\u20131994) and Stuart Schwartz from Yale University. During this period, the work of American historian and anthropologist Ralph Della Cava, from the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University, was especially noteworthy, including his book Miracle at Joaseiro <\/em>\u2014 one of the most important works on parish priest Padre C\u00edcero (1844\u20131934) \u2014 published in 1970. In an interview with Meihy, American Thomas Skidmore (1932\u20132016) admitted that \u201cthe reasons which led [him] to study Brazil depended on the US political context and its reflexes on [the] university system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Historian Meihy classifies Brazilianists into one of three categories: \u201cThe Pioneers,\u201d \u201cChildren of Castro,\u201d and \u201cThe Specialists\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Weinstein represents the third generation of Brazilianist scholars, who began publishing around the 1980s and are classified by Meihy as \u201cThe Specialists.\u201d Brazilianists in this period are less connected to the American context and more interested in studying Brazil itself, deepening their engagement with Brazilian scholars. The book Beyond Carnival: Male homosexuality in twentieth-century Brazil<\/em>, by American historian James Green of Brown University, for example, is considered groundbreaking in its portrayal of homosexual culture in Brazil.<\/p>\n

Fellow American historian John French of Duke University recounts how he was about to start his PhD in Mexico in the late 1970s, under the supervision of Brazilian historian Emilia Viotti da Costa (1928\u20132017) at Yale University, when Costa asked if there was any other topic that might interest him more, especially as it would be a lifetime dedication. \u201cAt that time, the ABC Paulista workers\u2019 movement was being widely reported in the media during its first strikes in opposition to the military regime (1964\u20131985),\u201d he recalls. \u201cSo I chose to specialize in this topic.\u201d His latest book is a biography of Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, the leader of the strikes, who would later be elected president of the country for three terms.<\/p>\n

It was during this period that Serbin first visited Brazil. \u201cThe trip was life-changing. I had intended to study Mexico, but instead I fell in love with a Brazilian woman and now consider myself a bicultural person, with Brazil as my second home. Through his friendship with a Luxembourgish novice sent to S\u00e3o Paulo, he was introduced to members of the clergy and went on to author books about the Brazilian Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

Among the recurring themes in Brazilian studies is racial relations, including the particularities and present-day impacts of slavery as practiced in the country. French noted, \u201cIt is impossible to study Brazil without dealing with the issue of slavery and the theme of race. Brazil is a country marked by entrenched hierarchies \u2014 regional, racial, and gender-based \u2014 and this needs to be taken into account.\u201d Among the notable contributions in this field are the works of American political scientist Gladys Mitchell-Walthour at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who served as president of BRASA from 2018 to 2020 and is now studying income transfer and affirmative action policies in Brazil, in comparison to similar initiatives in the US.<\/p>\n

French also has an ongoing research project on affirmative action in collaboration with legal scholar Silvio Almeida at Mackenzie Presbyterian University. His research is focused on the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court\u2019s 2012 decision on the country\u2019s affirmative action law. \u201cWe examined the participants in the hearings, who were predominantly white but also included members of the Black civil rights movement. We\u2019re looking to understand their discourse, strategy, and how they successfully won their case for the affirmative-action quotas,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Other Brazilianists are interested in the works of renowned Brazilian writers and thinkers. Grauov\u00e1, for instance, has published articles on Lima Barreto (1881\u20131922), as well as authors such as Machado de Assis, M\u00e1rio de Andrade (1893\u20131945), and Chico Buarque de Holanda. In the US, Peggy Sharpe, a literary critic at the University of Florida, devotes her research to Brazilian female writers such as Marina Colasanti, Adalzira Bittencourt (1904\u20131976), J\u00falia Lopes de Almeida (1862\u20131934), and N\u00edsia Floresta (1810\u20131885). In Germany, literary theorist Berthold Zilly has authored a vast body of research on Euclides da Cunha (1866\u20131909).<\/p>\n

Another field that has attracted a large contingent of scholars is the environment, especially in the context of Amazon occupation. \u201cGraduate and postgraduate students have shown increasing interest in issues surrounding the Amazon,\u201d says Serbin. Garmany concurs: \u201cConcerns over deforestation reflect the growing recognition that events in one place have ripple effects across the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientific articles
\n<\/strong>DELLA CAVA, R. \u201cBrasilianista\u201d \u2013 Que \u00e9 isso?\u00a0Revista do Instituto do Cear\u00e1<\/strong>. 2019.
\nFITZ, E.\u00a0The reception of Machado de Assis and Clarice Lispector in the United States and beyond<\/u>.<\/a>\u00a0Gla\u0301uks:<\/strong>\u00a0Revista de Letras e Artes<\/strong>. vol. 20, no. 2. 2020.
\nGRAUOV\u00c1, S.\u00a0Homem cordial e suas fardas: Os fracassos da modernidade em\u00a0Triste fim de Policarpo Quaresma<\/em><\/u><\/a>.\u00a0Teresa: revista de Literatura Brasileira<\/strong>. no. 19. 2018.
\nMENEZES NETO, G. M. de\u00a0Os brasilianistas est\u00e3o chegando: As contribui\u00e7\u00f5es dos pesquisadores estrangeiros para os estudos sobre a literatura de cordel no Brasil e na segunda metade do s\u00e9culo XX<\/u><\/a>.\u00a0Projeto Histo\u0301ria<\/strong>. vol. 74. 2022.
\nPRADO, L. C. D.\u00a0Werner Baer, os brasilianistas e a interpreta\u00e7\u00e3o econ\u00f4mica do Brasil: uma nota<\/u>.<\/a>\u00a0Cadernos do Desenvolvimento<\/strong>. vol. 11, no. 18. 2016.
\nWEINSTEIN, B.\u00a0Sou ainda uma Brazilianist<\/u>?<\/a>\u00a0Revista Brasileira de Histo\u0301ria<\/strong>. vol. 36, no. 72. 2016.<\/p><\/p>\n

Books
\n<\/strong>BUARQUE DE HOLLANDA, B. & MAIA, J. M. E. (eds.)\u00a0Ateli\u00ea do pensamento social: Brazilian studies \u2013 Como estudar em centros de pesquisa sobre o Brasil no exterior?\u00a0<\/strong>Rio de Janeiro: FGV Editora, 2017.
\nFRENCH, J.\u00a0Lula and his politics of cunning: From metalworker to president of Brazil<\/strong>. Chapel Hill: University of California Press, 2020. Brazilian edition:\u00a0Lula e a pol\u00edtica da ast\u00facia: De metal\u00fargico a presidente do Brasil<\/strong>.<\/em>\u00a0Translation by Lia Machado Fortes. S\u00e3o Paulo: Express\u0101o Popular\/Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Perseu Abramo, 2022.
\nGARMANY, J. & PEREIRA, A.\u00a0Understanding contemporary Brazil<\/strong>. London: Routledge, 2019.
\nMITCHELL-WALTHOUR, G.\u00a0The politics of blackness. Racial identity and political behavior in contemporary Brazil<\/strong>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
\nSERBIN, K.\u00a0From revolution to power in Brazil. How radical leftists embraced capitalism and struggled for leadership<\/strong>. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brazilianists in the twentieth century were concerned with explaining Brazil to foreign audiences; now their research places the country within the context of global issues","protected":false},"author":613,"featured_media":504239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":[165],"tags":[241,245,214,261],"coauthors":[1619],"class_list":["post-504234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanities","tag-history","tag-literature","tag-political-science","tag-sociology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504234","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\/613"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504251,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504234\/revisions\/504251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504234"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=504234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}