Lines of research

Narratives, Images and Sociabilities
This line of research brings together researchers interested in the multiple possibilities of working on the relationships between history and culture that have emerged over the past four decades. The theoretical and methodological concerns are located in the pursuit of a theory and an understanding of history that respect differences in narratives and gazes but that are also a politics, even if it is a politics situated outside the traditional social spaces intended for its exercise. In this sense, we are interested in examining cultural practices and representations, whether from the perspective of analyzing narratives, images or bonds of sociability or their articulations of power, understanding the tensions and multilateral determinations between cultural forms and historical forces. In other words, this line of research seeks to address topics that make it possible to rethink theories in their political dimension, allowing other approaches to topics that have already been naturalized by traditional narratives, such as national identities, cultural memory, constructed historical and literary images.

Politics, Culture and Labor
This line of research focuses on analyzing connections between the phenomena of power and labor, in their cultural interconnections. The line is divided into two primary clusters. In the first, the focus is on research that seeks to elucidate the multiple dimensions of the world of labor, particularly in the context of slavery and post-slavery societies in the Atlantic world, addressing the interconnected interests of the social actors involved, the economic, cultural and political contexts that legitimized the institution of slavery, and the relationships between labor, racism and citizenship in the post-abolition period. The second cluster focuses on investigations oriented towards studying the history of the twentieth century and the present time, particularly Republican Brazil, in a transnational perspective, with varied approaches around political, cultural and social history. Accordingly, individual and collective actors, institutions of the most varied types, as well as civil society through its repertoires, organizations and mobilizations compose the range of approaches in the cluster. The activities of the “Politics, Culture and Work” line are organized around the Laboratory of Economic and Social History (Laboratório de História Econômica e Social – LAHES), the Laboratory of Political and Social History (Laboratório de História Política e Social – LAHPS) and the Laboratory of Oral History and Image (Laboratório de História Oral e Imagem – LABHOI).