Brazil’s most famous historical icons—from the maroon warrior Dandara to President Dilma Rousseff—defied social expectations based on their gender, race, class, sexuality, and/or region. The constantly changing ways in which artists, screenwriters, journalists, and intellectuals present Brazil’s most famous historical women reflect both tensions over the rights of women in contemporary society and the struggle to unite multiple narratives of Brazilian national identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In this talk, Dr. Campbell outlines the structure of this project and show how some key historical women have been represented and re-invented in art, literature, film, and TV series. This exploratory paper asks the questions of how and why this group—in most cases the majority of the nation—is tied to the idea of nationhood and how their representation within media affects understandings of Brazilian history.

Dr. Courtney J. Campbell is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Latin American History at the University of Birmingham (UK). Her book, Region Out of Place: The Brazilian Northeast and the World (1924-1968) is under contract with the University of Pittsburgh Press.