The work aims to analyze the main instances that have enabled marginalized groups to access literacy and reading throughout the twentieth century in Brazil. It is based on a set of investigations that have been developed in the Study Group on Written Culture at UFMG. The research has used oral testimonials, autobiographies, "popular" prints, census data, and institutional documents as the main sources. The historiography of reading tends to concentrate its analyses on the spaces, supports, and canonical objects associated with reader training: the library and school; print; the book and the press. In countries like Brazil, however, where literacy and schooling have only recently spread, these elements may be insufficient to understand the history of written culture in the country.
The research carried out reveals that groups traditionally associated with orality and that, for a long time, were dissolved in expressions that, due to their own discursive load, tended to homogenize them - such as "people", "women", "dominated", "excluded", "blacks", "northeasterners" - used tactics and, in particular ways (not always coinciding with those that predominated in other "naturally" linked to the literate world social groups), inserted themselves into literacy practices and became readers. The modes of participation of these layers of the population in the world of written culture seem to be much more linked to oral practices of socialization of the written, to the circulation of the manuscript, and to non-school modes of learning. The city space, work, family, school, radio, social movements, churches of different denominations, and other religious institutions were revealed as the main agents of literacy.
Ana Maria de Oliveira Galvão, full professor at the Faculty of Education of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), is currently a visiting researcher at CHAM, New University of Lisbon, with funding from CAPES (Brazil). Her research areas are the history of written culture, the history of education, and research methodologies. With a PhD in Education from UFMG (2000), she carried out a "sandwich internship" at the Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique (France, 1998-99) and a senior internship (CAPES) as a visiting researcher at Northern Illinois University (USA, 2012-13). She is the author, among others, of the books Amansando meninos: uma história da educação a partir da obra de José Lins do Rego (1890-1920) (1998); Cordel: leitores e ouvintes (2001); Preconceito contra o analfabeto (2007, co-author); Território plural: a pesquisa em História da Educação (2010, co-author) and Culturas do escrito, educação e história: percursos de formação e de atuação de uma professora/pesquisadora de universidades públicas brasileiras (2022, forthcoming). She has also published several book chapters and articles in journals.
Organizing Committee
Daniel Melo (CHAM)
Patrícia Santos Hansen (CHAM)
Organization
CHAM / NOVA FCSH
Information, Reading, and Writing Forms
Partnership
Grupo de Investigação «Cultura, história e pensamento ibéricos e ibero-americanos»
Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal
