Envisioning Brazil: A Guide to Brazilian Studies in the United States

Chapter 7. Brazilian History in the United States

CHAPTER 7 Brazilian History in the United States JUDY BIEBER I. INTRODUCTION To evaluate a half-century of Brazilianist historical scholarship is both easier and more difficult than it seems. In the United States, the number of scholars who have written dissertations on Brazilian history in the twentieth century has been comparatively few. Historians of Brazil based in the United States do not have independent scholarly associations or journals specifically devoted to Brazilian history. Instead, they have turned to more broadly defined Latin American outlets such as the Conference on Latin American History and the Hispanic American Historical Review (hereafter, HAHR) to discuss and publish their work. The study of Brazilian history has also found a home in interdisciplinary journals like the Luso-Brazilian Review, which has provided ample space for historical contributions and often showcases particular historical themes in special issues.l The interdisciplinary Brazilian Studies Association, founded by Jon Tolman and Roberto Reis in 1992, has done much to facilitate international dialogue by holding conferences in the United States, England, and Brazil.2 As part of a relatively small and marginal subfield of Latin American history, historians of Brazil in the United States have had to look beyond their borders for intellectual inspiration and context. The North American Brazilianist community is not and never has been hermetically sealed. The works of Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, Capistrano de Abreu, Jose Hon6rio Rodrigues, Gilberto Freyre, Caio Prado Jr., Florestan Fernandes, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Sergio Buarque de Holanda, Emilia Viotti da Costa, and Carlos Guilherme Mota, among others, represent fundamental Brazilian History in the United States obras chaves in the training of most, if not all, u.s. historians of Brazil. The Cambridge History of Latin America, a basic starting point for many graduate students, was edited by Englishman Leslie Bethell. Our understanding of the colonial era has been influenced incalculably by British historians such as Robert Southey, Charles Boxer, A. J. R. Russell-Wood, and Kenneth Maxwell. Some of the finest works on the empire were written by scholars born elsewhere, namely, Richard Graham, born in Goias to American parents, and Roderick Barman, originally from England but with an academic career spent in Vancouver, Canada. A strictly nationalist definition of "Brazilianist;' therefore, can be misleading. Although North American scholars may quibble over who invented the term "Brazilianist;' how it should be spelled, and to whom it should be applied, Brazilian scholars have adopted more inclusive definitions. In a recent survey of "Brazilianist" works that have appeared in translation, Fernanda Massi and Heloisa Pontes (1992) did not limit their definition of"Brazilianist" to North Americans but included prominent social scientists from Great Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Spain and Spanish-speaking America, and Greece. Nor did they limit their survey to historians. In his 1990 evaluation of the "brasilianista" community, Jose Carlos Sebe Bom Meiliy also included scholars from a variety of disciplines but limited his sample to scholars who had based their academic careers in the United States, regardless of their birthplace.3 These more neutral, descriptive definitions seem far more useful and appropriate than the more politically charged term that was applied pejoratively to the generation of scholars that did research in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970S during the height of the Cold War. I would, however, expand it further still to include Brazilians who were trained in the United States and North Americans who chose to make Brazil their academic home, such as Robert Slenes, John Monteiro, and Douglas Libby. To adopt a more inclusive definition of "Brazilianist" is not inconsistent with the broader goals of this volume. My task is not to provide a comprehensive bibliographical listing of all of the major books and articles produced by U.S. citizens since 1945, a task that already has been ably tackled by others.4 Rather, this essay will identify works representative of larger trends in a fashion that is selective but, it is hoped, not arbitrary. My aim is to identify major historiographic trends in terms of periodization , subject matter, themes, method, and theoretical approach and to draw comparisons between scholarly trajectories in the United States and Brazil. These trends did not develop in a vacuum but transcend national boundaries and accommodate a plurality of influences. JUDY BIEBER II. DEFINING THE FIELD Brazilian history has been an understudied field in the United States compared to other regions of Latin America such as Mexico.5...