Lines of Research

The Master’s and PhD programs’ area of concentration comprise the concentration area (Social History of Culture) as well as 3 lines of research:

Lines of research – 1: Theory, Historiography and Intellectual History

This line of research focuses, on the one hand, on treating the issues linked to the debates on theory and history in a historiographic manner, thus being able to analyze it from a perspective that takes its non-normative, discontinuous and constructed character into account. On the other hand, it seeks to develop an intellectual history that endeavors to examine intellectual protocol categories—such as “example’” and “narrative”—typical of the historiographic tradition and of concepts and discourses constituting its more specific objects. Hence, this line of research includes theoretical discussions about the notion of culture held in the midst of the Human Sciences.

The faculty who adhere to this line are: Eduardo Wright Cardoso, Henrique Estrada, João de Azevedo e Dias Duarte, Marcelo Jasmin, Maria Elisa Noronha de Sá e Maurício Parada.

Lines of research – 2: Cultural Experiences and Connections

This line of research focuses on customs, ideas and beliefs shared by different subjects and groups in their communication, exchange and cultural networking activities. In the wake of the possibilities made real by the transnational, comparative and networked approaches, as well as of the critique of the supposed totality underlying the concept of culture, this line of research encompasses works which denaturalize and problematize the many identities created through it. By means of a continuous dialogue with the other human and social sciences, especially Anthropology, Geography, Linguistics and Education, this line of research seeks to reflect on the variables inherent to identity and alterity construction processes. Here the focus falls on the experience dimension, in an attempt at understanding in an integrated manner both the intellectual and artistic elaborations of the different subjects and groups, and the perspectives expressed in their practices, experiences and day-to-day relationships.

This line includes the following faculty members: Crislayne Gloss Marão Alfagali, Diego Antonio Galeano, Felipe Azevedo e Souza, Juçara Barbosa, Larissa Rosa Correa, Leonardo A. M. Pereira e Regiane Augusto de Mattos.

Lines of Research – 3: History of Art and Architecture

The main goal of this line of research is to foster critical reflection on art and architecture, focusing on their forms of historicity with emphasis on historiographic production. Far from emphasizing an exclusively internal reading of the history of art, it seeks to dialogue with Philosophy, Esthetics, Culture, Anthropology and the other fields of the social and human sciences. The main though not exclusive research focus of the line involves the historical development of art in modern and contemporary times.

This line of research is formed by the following faculty members: João Masao Kamita, Otavo Leonídio Ribeiro e Sergio Bruno Martins.