Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros
The University of São Paulo's Brazilian Studies Institute is a multidisciplinary centre for education, research and documentation on the culture of the nation. With a staff of scholars from various backgrounds, the centre offers graduate, post-graduate, diffusion and extension courses, as well as orientation in scientific initiation, master and post-doctoral studies. To reflect on Brazilian society through the articulation of multiple fields of knowledge was the challenge at the heart of the IEB's foundation in 1962, by Sergio Buarque de Holanda, and it has motivated the production of a wealth of original research ever since, some of which has found its outlet in its Revista (Journal). Created in 1966, the Journal of the Brazilian Studies Institute - USP was published without interruption until 1997. Given the very nature of the institute, the Journal always followed a multidisciplinary approach, embracing different trends and lines of research and opening its pages to researchers from an enormous diversity of institutions. In many fields of knowledge, the Journal played a part in the drive to renew Brazilian studies that began in the 1960s, serving as one of the key outlets for the diffusion of original scientific research from Brazilian universities and their post-graduate programs between 1970 and 1990. It was also one of the vehicles for the divulgation of the IEB's vast archive, which today includes the personal collections of such fundamental names in Brazilian culture as Mário de Andrade, Graciliano Ramos, Guimarães Rosa, Osman Lins, Alberto Lamego, Yan de Almeida Prado, José Honório Rodrigues, Caio Prado Jr., Pierre Monbeig, Anita Malfatti, Francisco Mignone and Camargo Guarnieri. The IEB Journal, a forum for debate devoted to incorporating a multiplicity of themes, schools of thought and lines of research, was resumed in September 2006 with the proposal of integrating the various branches of the Humanities, accepting the challenge of critically thinking Brazil and facilitating dialogue between different fields of knowledge - though without compromising on the specificities and technical rigor demanded by the specialist reader. Its goal is, therefore, to present studies of such theoretical and methodological relevance and significance that they can and should transcend compartmentalization. Furthermore, it is with that same objective of promoting debates in which knowledge from disparate origins can meet and interact that the IEB Journal opens its pages to both the analysis of problems facing contemporary Brazil and to reflections that investigate theoretical dimensions of Brazilian studies. To this end, it assumes the challenge of molding itself into an agglutinative - but not harmonizing - forum for the countless frontiers of knowledge.
Universidade de São Paulo. Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros
Todo o conteúdo do periódico, exceto onde está identificado, está licenciado sob uma Licença Creative Commons do tipo atribuição CC-BY.
Popular culture as praxis: the Brazilian viola in Ivan Vilela
Review of the book História e cultura no som da viola, by Ivan Vilela, which analyzes its contributions to studies on popular culture, Brazilian music, and music education. The text highlights the transdisciplinary nature of the book and the author’s effort to restore the viola’s sociocultural relevance and historical prominence as an instrument of the popular classes. More than a book about music, the work is situated within the long tradition of Brazilian social thought by taking popular music as an interpretive key to the country’s historical formation. It also emphasizes the critique of eurocentrism in music education and the defense of the institutionalization of the viola (Brazilian ten-string guitar) through an articulation of orality, listening, and notation.
Copyright (c) 2026 Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Perifobia is a collection of short stories by São Paulo based writer Lilia Guerra, republished in 2025. This review aims to show how she places the periphery at the center of her writing and presents stories that challenge racial stereotypes and reveal fascinating lives, bringing to the fore characters who reinvent themselves in the face of violence and poverty, aligning her with the political and ethical project of Carolina Maria de Jesus in Quarto de despejo (2020).
The “necessary science” and the “style and practice of the backlands”: a Jesuit document on the enslavement of indigenous people in the Amazon (18th century)
This article presents a colonial document from the archives of the IEB concerning the enslavement of Indigenous peoples in eighteenth-century Amazonia. Entitled Directorio manual, the text was most likely authored by a Jesuit and engages with the thorny issue of the examination of Indigenous enslavement. Colonial Amazonian society was fundamentally based on Indigenous slavery. In this context, inquiries into the legality and legitimacy of enslavement procedures constituted a persistent concern. The document reveals the circularity and relationship between legal doctrines and local practices.
Poems: three unpublished poems by Ana Martins Marques
Three unpublished poems by Ana Martins Marques.
Regimes of distance, mobility and the “internal peri-urban” in São Paulo
The objective of this text is to articulate contemporary urban spatial logics with the produced distance regimes, the derived mobility conditions and the provided spatialities. The empiric field of reference is the metropolis of São Paulo. It is argued that during the last 40 years the city of São Paulo went through a process of “internal peri-urbanization”, the construction of a displaced space, which disturbed the distance regime of dense cities, by introducing a networked spatial structure (made up of gated communities and shopping malls) with another distance regime that favors and stimulates the city’s auto-mobilization, ending up as a big source of problems to the metropolis’ urban mobility. There is the need to point out that the discussion is permeated by a concept of urban mobility which goes beyond its technical dimension, and situates it as one of the constitutive values of urban life and urbanity.
Notes on a demolished building: the atelier of Aldemir Martins, by Carlos A. C. Lemos
This article documents and analyzes the atelier of artist Aldemir Martins (1922-2006), designed in 1972 by Carlos Lemos (1925-2025) in Sumaré, São Paulo, and demolished in 2020. Based on family drawings, photos, and notes, it examines the architectural concept, adaptation to the sloped site, exposed concrete structure, and three levels under a sloping roof. The study places the work in the context of 1970s São Paulo architecture, marked by Brutalism, vernacular references, and formal experimentation, highlighting the space’s personal value for the artist. Combining record and critical analysis, it seeks to fill a gap on a lost example of Brazilian modern architecture and reflect on the loss of unprotected cultural assets.
Brazilian young adult literature and the editorial transformation (1980-1990)
This study analyzes the publishing landscape of Brazilian children’s and young adult literature in the 1980s and 1990s, exploring how the incorporation of this literature into the school environment influenced both editorial production and narrative construction. The study examines the relationships among publishers, schools, and authors, highlighting the development of the book market and its impact on the evolution of literary works. It reveals how publishers specialized in producing books aimed at young readers, consolidating specific categories such as educational supplements, literary works, and entertainment books. Drawing on book historiography and an interdisciplinary approach, the study connects authors’ aesthetic choices to market dynamics, proposing a critical reading that links the production of literary works to the publishing system that shaped them.
Looking back: melancholy, desire and paralysis in O padre e a moça
The article analyzes O padre e a moça (1965), by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, in dialogue with “O padre, a moça” by Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Lição de coisas, 1962). It examines how the film, made after the 1964 coup, shifts the poem’s tension from a metaphysical to a social plane and how this is reflected in its cinematic language. The analysis compares their formal strategies, showing how the film builds a poetics of containment, in contrast to the movement that structures the poem. With a fragmentary aesthetic, the film articulates a critique of colonial and authoritarian oppression inscribed in the landscape and social organization of the small town where it is set.
Milton Santos, political prisoner: the messages of Walfrido Moraes (1964)
This article presents a historiographical reading based on a set of documents from Milton Santos’ personal collection, safeguarded at IEB-USP, relating to the period when he was imprisoned by the dictatorial regime established in 1964. It consists of a series of messages from the Bahian journalist and writer Walfrido Moraes, delivered to Santos in an Army barracks in the city of Salvador, in wich evidence emerges of the dynamics of conformation of certain Bahia institutions to the new dictatorial order, and the impact of the civil-military dictatorship on society. Furthermore, a look at these notes also offers an opportunity to understand the effects of the 1964 coup on this geographer’s career, a topic that Santos rarely explored publicly.
The muralist minimalism of Rubem Braga in the chronicle “Pedaços de cartas”
In “Pedaços de cartas” (“Fragments of Letters”), Braga rewrites pieces of letters supposedly by common people during the Batalha da Borracha (Rubber Battle). This chronicle is a mosaic of voices, in a sort of polyphonic collage akin to the formal strategies typical of the avant-garde. It analyzes as Braga’s way of literarily recreating techniques of the “muralistas”, such as Candido Portinari, in a sort of “muralist minimalism”. Contextualizing “Pedaços de cartas”, it argues it is a critical response to the possible return of Getúlio Vargas to power – a response given “from below”, through the voices of the oppressed. Hence, a “muralist minimalism against the State”. This essay follows the method of Davi Arrigucci Jr., combining close reading and the correlation of literary form and social tensions.
Di Cavalcanti: “mulatismo”, bohemianism and activism in perspective
Established criticism of Di Cavalcanti has often emphasized his connection to bohemian life, highlighting his urban experiences and his intellectual and artistic interactions. This approach, however, has marginalized his commitment to social art and political activism. Although considered by Mário de Andrade in 1932 as the "chief mulatto artist," exalting popular culture and miscegenation, his work reveals a deeper social and political engagement, frequently neglected by traditional interpretations. This article proposes a critical review of historical readings of his art, investigating how Di Cavalcanti structured his visual production based on a socio-political commitment, especially between the 1920s and 1930s, when his work as an artist intertwined with debates on nationalism, socialism, and popular identity.
Dialectics of the dotô: the musical scenes of The apprentice tourist
The article examines the musical scenes described in the chronicles written by Mário de Andrade during his trip to the Northeast in 1928-1929. It argues that these texts constitute more than just a folklore research diary, as they shape the social relations revealed in the contact between the São Paulo intellectual and popular musical expressions. The analysis ultimately reveals the tensions within the modernist effort of apprehending and integrating Brazilian cultural components.
Fixed idea: Machado’s capture of Oswald, Mário, and Drummond
Although repudiated in articles and manifestos that have become canonical within the history of Brazilian modernism, Machado de Assis exerted a profound influence on the formation and development of the movement. This article aims to underscore his presence in pivotal works from the 1920s, authored by Oswald de Andrade, Mário de Andrade and Carlos Drummond de Andrade. Its primary objective is to problematize the notion that the “classical” writer and his avant-garde successors occupy antagonistic positions within the trajectory of Brazilian literary history.
Ambiguities in chapter “The true Cotrim” of The posthumous memoirs of Brás Cubas
A characteristic always highlighted in the writing of Machado de Assis is ambiguity. This proposal seeks to recognize this mark in the textual materiality of the chapter “The True Cotrim” from The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, in which tension can be pointed out between the instances of enunciation and narration. Machado's ambiguity shapes a narrative form that adapts the contradictions of Brazilian society, controlled by trafficking and slavery.
The late pastor Josino (also known as José da Natividade Saldanha or Cisne) in exile in his homeland of Pernambuco between 1826 and 1822
In this article, we will analyze two books by the Pernambuco-born José da Natividade Saldanha, Elementos de retorica en castellano y latin (1826) and Poemas oferecidos aos amantes do Brazil (1822), avoiding, however, any relation to the author's biographical data. The first, which we have retrieved from the copy deposited at the Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin at the Universiade de São Paulo, will be examined based on dimensions related to poetry, especially the ideas of figure, trope, sublime, and taste. The second will undergo a study that highlights its dynamics of ambiguity and contradiction, particularly in the aspect of the permanence and impermanence of time based on the Virgilian Tempus fugit.
To the hero who throws the party: the Academia dos Felizes (São Paulo, 1770)
This article investigates the Academia dos Felizes, founded in São Paulo in 1770. To this end, it examines the codex of the Relação das festas públicas, the festivities in which the academy took part, the writings produced from it, and the construction of the captaincy’s governor as a hero. Through this material, it is possible to observe the presence, in São Paulo, of individuals capable of forming an academy, who shared contemporary conceptions of what it meant to compose poetry and who employed writing to commemorate an event. It also reveals an intention to bequeath positive images of the occasion to the future not only through words, but also through the materiality of the codex itself.
Foliões do Divino and others “fulioens de cantar” in the captaincy and the province of São Paulo (1767-1835)
In this article, we have assembled the names of foliões identified in the censuses of the Captaincy and the Province of São Paulo for the period between 1765-1850. These records constitute a rare testimony to an oral tradition musical practice in the colonial and imperial periods. By cross-referencing the data obtained with the parish records of the localities where they lived, we have reconstructed the biographies of these foliões in order to understand who these individuals were, their family environment, their ways of living, and what the activity of folião represented in their lives.
Temporalidades, processos, objetos culturais: Brasil multidimensional
The book Correspondência inédita e anotada – Alberto de Serpa – João Cabral de Melo Neto – O cavalo de todas as cores, organized by Solange Fiuza and Arnaldo Saraiva, was published in 2025 by Ateliê Editorial and presents the official correspondence between two writers, the Brazilian João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999) and the Portuguese Alberto de Serpa (1906-1992). This review focuses on this volume, including the essays written by the organizers and the letters transcribed in the edition.
Copyright (c) 2025 Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Conservation in context: values, risks and decisions
This essay examines conservation and restoration practices at the Institute of Brazilian Studies (IEB/USP) by comparing three types of paper-based collections – archival documents, works on paper from the Visual Arts Collection, and books from the Library – which share the same materiality but operate under distinct statutes. From an ethical standpoint, it discusses how values, risks, and principles guide technical decisions and care policies. Three vignettes reveal different approaches to prevention, conservation, and restoration, highlighting the role of time as a coauthor: to intervene is to edit its passage without silencing the material voice of the object.
Mônica Aparecida Guilherme da Silva Bento
A collection of fictional writings by Nione Claudino, comprising a thematic panel of her recent literary production. A graduate in Literature from Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho”, the author presented, during her master's degree at Middlesex University in London, under the supervision of Jonathan Kemp, the creative process of her first novel. In 2023, with “A vendedora de café”, she won the Purorrelato competition, organized by Casa África, in the Canary Islands. She was a finalist for the Off Flip Literature Award in the Short Stories category and participated for the first time in the collection Nós: textos de autoria feminina (2023). In addition to Nós 2 (2024), she participated in the collection Tchê! (2025c) and had her short story “Ideal” published in Revista Tinta Azul (2024). This was followed by her third participation in the anthology Nós 3, with a short story and a chronicle (2025a; 2025c). She currently lives in Marseille, France, dedicating herself to literary research while finishing her first novel.
The article summarizes two dissertations on Tom Zé defended in the Graduate Program in “Brazilian Cultures and Identities” at IEB/USP: Three essays about Tom Zé’s Tropicália: from the Popular Music Festivals to the current public and private cultural fundings, by Patrícia Anette Schroeder Gonçalves; and “Baptize this baby”: market, MPB, samba and social process in Tom Zé’s Estudando o samba, by Leilor Miranda Soares. Both summaries discuss issues such as Tom Zé’s relationship with Tropicália, some of his compositional and performative resources, and the place the artist has occupied over time in the hegemonic market.
Speech delivered on the occasion of the tribute organized by the Institute of Brazilian Studies at the University of São Paulo in honor of the artist Tom Zé, in recognition of his body of work and his contribution to Brazilian culture. The ceremony was held on June 24, 2025, at the István Jancsó Auditorium, University City, Butantã campus.
Three unpublished letters from Mário de Andrade to Murilo Mendes
This essay aims to present three unpublished letters from Mário de Andrade to Murilo Mendes, which are deposited in Jorge de Lima’s collection, at the Arquivo-Museu de Literatura Brasileira (AMLB) at Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, in Rio de Janeiro. Among the missives (written in 1932 and 1933) there two manuscripts of two poemas by Mário, “Nova canção do Tamoio” e “Girassol da madrugada”. In turn, in Mário de Andrade’s collection at Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros of the Universidade de São Paulo (IEB/USP), thirty-two documents are preserved, including letters and handwritten notes, sent by Murilo to Mário, between 1928 and 1944.
Nietzsche on the desk in the house on Lopes Chaves street
In his collection of books, maintained by the Library of the Institute of Brazilian Studies, Mário de Andrade kept works by Friedrich Nietzsche in French translation edited in the 1910s and 1920s. This article aims to analyse the Brazilian author's reading of the German philosopher’s work, following, to this end, his marginalia. Thus, it seeks to situate Mário de Andrade, either as a reader or as a writer, in the context of Nietzsche’s reception in Brazil.
Imaginative observation and defetishization in “Noite morta” by Manuel Bandeira
This article presents an analysis of the poem “Noite morta”, by Manuel Bandeira, from O ritmo dissoluto (1924). The analysis seeks to demonstrate, considering the aesthetic specificity of the text, the de-fetishizing character of Bandeira’s poem, considering Lukácsian concepts such as “receptive experience” and “catharsis”. The central hypothesis is that the poem presents the reader with a journey that goes from the singularity of everyday situations to human generality, through the constitution of a system of ambivalences that refers the poem to the de-fetishizing tendency of art.
Between “Sacigiotto” and “Sacigropius”: the studio, the city and the public legacy of Luiz Sacilotto
This article analyzes the work and reflections of Luiz Sacilotto between the 1950s and the 1970s based on three little-known items found in his studio in Santo André: an advertisement featuring him as a poster boy; a page from Acropole magazine about the Mainumbi building project in São Vicente; and an interview with Lasar Segall Museum in 1977. These elements open up possibilities for discussing his production beyond the historic Ruptura group, including his actions in the urban environment and in contemporary art. The study aims to contribute to the historiography of concrete art in Brazil through new interpretations of the work of a central artist for the debate on concrete art.
Regarding a collection of paintings by Tarsila do Amaral: the 1940s
Based on the exhibition “Tarsila do Amaral: peindre le Brésil moderne”, held at the Musée du Luxembourg (Paris, 2024-2025), it is notable how some of the artist’s paintings, created in the 1940s, gain prominence due to elements that both connect them to and distinguish them from her Social and Neo Pau-Brasil phases. In Lenhador em repouso (1940), Terra (1943), Primavera (duas figuras) (1946), Praia (1947) e Estratosfera (1947), we see swift and light, almost pointillist brushstrokes and also a relative distancing from the pictorial social realism he practiced, returning to the metaphysical environments and dreamlike gigantism typical of the anthropophagic period, quite characteristic of works such as Urutu (1928), Anthropophagy (1929), and Abaporu (1928), but in a distinct manner. Due to their particular pictorial composition and the few interpretations dedicated to them, this work aims to analyze these works as a whole and attempt a more general interpretation of them.