Emilia Viotti da Costa explores the past to imagine the future
A collection of writings by one of the most important Brazilian historians of the twentieth century. They stimulate the reader to profoundly rethink Brazil’s past and reimagine its future
Emilia Viotti da Costa, a finalist in the 1915 Jabuti prize in the Social Sciences category, has quickly earned her a distinguished place among Brazil’s historians through classics such as Da Senzala à Colônia (From Slavery to Free Labor) and Da Monarquia à Republica (From the Monarchy to the Republic), both published by Editora Unesp. In these seminal works, she succeeded in an effort that would continue to mark her career: to recover the voices of ordinary people, voices that had been largely absent in the works of Brazilian historians. Her writings quickly became points of reference for scholars, but also brought new insights into such perennial national issues as authoritarianism and the fragility of democratic institutions.
In sum, her intellectual trajectory was not only innovative and provocative in scholar terms, but also publicly and actively engaged with the Brazilian society, a richly delineated career in Brazil: Histories, Texts and Contexts [Brasil: história, textos e contextos], published by Editora Unesp.
Studies of Brazilian history are written at various moments, from her earliest efforts in the 1950s to the most recent, which date from the past two decades. They all carry a dramatic contemporary vividness and relevance. This is particularly present in the acceptance speech she delivered when she earned the title of Professor Emeritus at University of São Paulo. This quality is equally obvious in “Globalização e reforma universitária: a sobrevivência do MEC-Usaid” [Globalization and Reform of the University: The Persistence of MEC-Usaid]. In that forceful essay, she examined a joint Brazilian-North American proposal for an educational “reform,” and revealed connections to much broader political and economic agendas shared by the two governments of that time. Her analysis is vital to today’s urgent debates about the possible resurrection of a similar project – debates that once again involve financing of higher education in Brazil and institutional independence of public universities.
From the dilemmas of neo-liberalism to the successes and failures of a Central America common market, from University “reforms” to reflections upon the world crisis of the past decade, Emilia Viotti focused her attention on social questions and problems that were largely absent from traditional grand historical narratives.
As a result, she brilliantly demystified simplistic conceptions of Brazilian history, opening possibilities for a more profound analysis of national identity, which could lead to new and vital insights into the nation´s present. She examined social and cultural habits that were solidified since the Colonial Period, and as she did so, she opened paths towards ample and richly varying forms of imagining the future.
About the author – Emilia Viotti da Costa was born in São Paulo in 1928. She was trained as a historian in the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters, and Human Sciences of the University of São Paulo, and became a full professor in that university. Forced out of the university in 1969 by the infamous military decree AI-5, she had to leave Brazil to continue teaching. She taught briefly at Tulane University, the University of Illinois, and Smith College, then joined the department of History at Yale University. There, she supervised a program on Latin American History. She taught at Yale for two decades and retired from the department as professor emeritus.Her impressive list of published and reprinted books, all by Editora Unesp, includes Da Monarquia à República [From the Monarchy to the Republic, 2010], A abolição [Abolition, 2012], Da Senzala à Colônia [From Slavery to Free Labor, 2012], and A dialética invertida e outros ensaios [The Dialectic Inverted , and Other Essays, 2014, a finalist in the Jabuti Prize in 2015]. In collaboration with Unesp, she also directed the large collection of books on Revoluções do Século Vinte [Revolutions of the Twentieth Century]. Emilia Viotti died in November 2017.
Title: Brazil: Histories, Texts and Contexts [Brasil: história, textos e contextos]
Author: Emília Viotti da Costa
Pages: 352
Format: 14 x 21 cm
ISBN: 978-85-393-0607-7
Rights: worldwide free