University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Spring August 2014 DISCOVERING BRAZIL IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY FRANCE, 1930-- 1964: FRANCO-BRAZILIAN CULTURAL POLITICS IN THE ERA OF DECOLONIZATION Andrew R. Dausch University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Cultural History Commons, Diplomatic History Commons, European History Commons, Intellectual History Commons, Latin American History Commons, Political History Commons, and the Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons Recommended Citation Dausch, Andrew R., "DISCOVERING BRAZIL IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY FRANCE, 1930-1964: FRANCO-- BRAZILIAN CULTURAL POLITICS IN THE ERA OF DECOLONIZATION" (2014). Doctoral Dissertations. 67. https://doi.org/10.7275/41eq-sz73 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/67 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DISCOVERING BRAZIL IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY FRANCE, 1930-1964: FRANCO-BRAZILIAN CULTURAL POLITICS IN THE ERA OF DECOLONIZATION A Dissertation Presented by Andrew R. Dausch Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2014 Department of History © Copyright by Andrew R. Dausch, 2014 All Rights Reserved DISCOVERING BRAZIL IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY FRANCE, 1930-1964: FRANCO-BRAZILIAN CULTURAL POLITICS IN THE ERA OF DECOLONIZATION A Dissertation Presented by Andrew R. Dausch Approved as to style and content by: ________________________________________________________ Daniel Gordon, Chair ________________________________________________________ Jennifer Heuer, Member ________________________________________________________ Daphne Patai, Member ________________________________________________________ Joel Wolfe, Member _______________________________________________________ Joye Bowman, Chair, Department of History DEDICATION To Mom and Dad—for teaching me the most important things... ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The experience of writing this dissertation was a test of my intellectual and personal limits. I learned Portuguese from scratch, conducted research in three languages, on three continents, while trying to bridge two different national histories. None of this would have been possible without the love and support I received throughout this difficult journey. I want to express my appreciation to the many individuals and institutions responsible for helping me bring this project to maturity. First, I want to thank the members of my dissertation committee for encouraging and inspiring my development as a historian. They all provided exemplary models of what it means to be a dedicated scholar. My primary advisor and chair, Daniel Gordon helped me realize that my most valuable intellectual asset was my ability to draw surprising connections between things. He encouraged me to think big—across disciplines and traditions of historical writing. In supervising the dissertation, Dan applied a judicious mix of kindness and toughness. His criticism was as valuable as his encouragement and helped me deepen my thinking and sharpen my expression. While Dan encouraged me to think big, Jennifer Heuer kept my feet firmly planted on the earth by asking the tough questions about sources and pressuring me to solidify my arguments. Besides pushing me to be more concrete, Jennifer has been exceedingly generous in guiding my intellectual and professional development. Without her urging and support, I would never have developed the skills and v confidence necessary to complete this project. I knew that when Jennifer said something was good, I could trust it. Daphne Patai's support for this project began at the moment of conception. It was in her course that I first began to substantively connect my interests in France and Brazil. She was the first to guide my study of Brazil's history and encouraged me to pursue my interest in Lévi-Strauss and the role of French intellectuals in Brazil. In addition to offering valuable feedback on my work, she helped me navigate some of the challenges of doing research in Brazil by providing valuable advice and contacts. She also helped me quickly access sources that would have otherwise required more time and effort on my part. Her advice on navigating academia's challenges and invitations to a couple of wonderful feijoadas made my graduate experience richer and more fulfilling. I owe Joel Wolfe many thanks for his help and guidance. Besides providing me with some of the best advice on navigating academia and life more generally, Joel taught me just about everything I know about Brazilian and Latin American history. Without his support, this project would never have matured and developed. Besides the countless suggestions he offered for conceptualizing and researching the dissertation, Joel introduced me to important contacts and treated me to innumerable meals where he helped convince me that I could really do this. Beyond the support I received from my advisors, a number of faculty provided crucial support. I want to thank Katherine Bliss, John Higginson, Jane Rausch, and Charles Rearick for all that they taught me over the course of my years in graduate school. Brian Ogilvie merits a special thank you for inspiring me to take vi up studying history at the graduate level, serving as my initial advisor, and looking out for me over the course of my time at UMass. I am also grateful to Joye Bowman, José Angel Hernández, Bruce Laurie, Marla Miller, Larry Owens and Peter Stern for providing vital advice and direction. In the history department, I also want to thank Mary Lashway, our Graduate Program Assistant, for helping me navigate the administrative aspects of completing my degree and making the history department a pleasant place to be. Besides intellectual and moral support, the history department has also provided me with generous funding. A Bauer-Gordon award allowed me to spend time at the Centre des Archives diplomatiques in Nantes, France. The department also granted me multiple Marvin L. Ogilvie Memorial Grants for Foreign Language Study. These were essential for my acquisition of Portuguese as a research language and also funded research I conducted in Brazil. In addition to the generous support of the history department, the College of Humanities and Fine Arts awarded me a dissertation fellowship for the 2010-2011 Academic Year. This fellowship allowed me to focus on the dissertation full time and helped me to generate the momentum without which it would have been impossible to complete the project. I am deeply grateful to Dean Hayes and the University of Massachusetts College of Humanities and Fine Arts for this support. Outside of the University of Massachusetts, I received thoughtful suggestions and encouragement from Hugo Rogélio Suppo, Darién Davis, John French, and Jonathan Judaken. I want to especially thank Roderick Barman and Kevin Quashie for their friendship and for providing me with much needed academic life coaching. vii I am also grateful to the archivists who made my research trips abroad particularly fruitful: Anne-Sophie Cras at the Centre des archives diplomatiques de Nantes and Elisabeth Conceta Mirra at the Centro de Apoio à Pesquisa em História at the University of São Paulo. Fellow graduate students, friends, and family encouraged me throughout the process and helped shape my thinking. I want to thank my graduate student friends and colleagues Yveline Alexis, Babette Faehmel, Chris Fobare, Justin Jackson, Michella Marino, Laura Miller, Ann Robinson, Jeff Robinson, and Margo Shea for being sounding boards for my ideas, frustrations, and for making my graduate experience rich and rewarding. Sandra Haley deserves special thanks for a number of interventions that kept me from giving up entirely and for introducing me to my wonderful host and friend in São Paulo, Larissa Rosa Correa. My friends outside the department played an important role in helping remind me that I was more than just a graduate student. I want to thank all my tennis friends for giving me the opportunity to take out my frustrations on the court. My friends from my days working in the Mount Holyoke College development office also helped provide perspective on my life. I owe a debt of deep gratitude to Peter Sapira for being a good friend and life coach during those times I felt especially challenged. And I want to thank my friend Geneva Chao for helping me edit and revise my prosaic French in those situations when a more refined style was necessary. Finally, I want to thank my family for all the love and support they have provided. I thank my sister Ann for introducing me to the world of French thought viii and making my intellectual universe much bigger than it would have been otherwise. My sister Barbara inspired me by her own example and helped me keep a sane perspective on school and life. I am dedicating this dissertation to my parents because they have helped me in every possible way. As NYC high school teachers, they inspired in me a love for learning. I can credit my father, a social studies teacher, with my interest and love for history. I appreciate all the sacrifices they made along the way for me—especially my mother's daring to cross the Kosciuszko bridge every morning at an ungodly hour so that I could have opportunities she never had. Finally, I want to thank my partner, Russell W. Carrier, who integrated me into his family and to Crystal, Julia, and Seth for making me feel welcomed to be a part of that family. His love and our French Bulldog, Colette, have lifted my spirits on a daily basis. Without Russ keeping my mind out of the dark wood he calls "Dauschland," it would not have been possible to write this dissertation. Although we joke about it, it is true that he has earned this degree as well.