Professoras e a federação brasileira pelo progresso feminino: Aproximações, associações e distanciamentos pela educação (1921 – 1936)

Abstract

This thesis corresponds to a trajectory of studies guided by the proposal to construct a history of female teachers within the temporal scope of 1921 to 1936. It was developed within the framework of the Programa de Pós-graduação em Educação at the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, in the line of História e Historiografia da Educação. The activity of the group of female education workers during this period highlights protagonists of social relations, thus active agents of the power dynamics at both macro and micro levels of society. In the field of Women's History studies, the analysis aligns with the countercultural perspective, a branch of Cultural History studies. The development of the historiographic investigation is based on documents from the Fundo Federação Brasileira pelo Progresso Feminino, a collection maintained by the Arquivo Nacional and made available for online access through the SIAN – Sistema de Informação do Arquivo Nacional, a virtual platform. The consulted collection is composed of a series of digitized files of iconographic, textual, and auditory genres. Consequently, the selection of files for analysis prioritizes productions by female teachers of the period or elements that indirectly pertain to such figures. In dialogue with the bibliographical references that address themes related to the issues presented throughout the text, other collections were consulted to verify additional documents. Thus, sources of analysis identified in virtual collections maintained by the Biblioteca Nacional, such as the Hemeroteca Digital and the portal Brasiliana Fotográfica, mainly composing the series "Feministas Graças a Deus!" and the Hemeroteca Catarinense, as well as audiovisual productions of the documentary, are included. The text's guiding thread presents two parts. PART I comprises the introduction and three chapters focused on theoretical-methodological reflection and macro-social contextualization, highlighting the relevance of the female association that names the source and its representation as part of the "associativismo feminino", a larger movement identified in the period and led by women who organized as a strategy for positioning in public debate. This part also explores the relationship established by female leaders with established power centers of the dominant culture. In turn, PART II consists of three chapters focused on the professional and activist trajectories of teachers: Leolinda Figueiredo Daltro, an indigenist who formulated the concept of "secular catechism" and a feminist precursor; Armanda Álvaro Alberto, an intellectual of the Escola Nova responsible for a long-standing sanitary education project at the Escola Regional de Meriti and her ideal of "regionalized education"; and Antonieta de Barros, the first black woman elected in the country, author of the chronicles "Farrapos de Ideais," under the pseudonym Maria da Ilha, and a defender of education as a path to peace. The "considerations" conclude the proposed reflection about female education workers, figures who actively participated in various events identified by traditional historiography and in events that marked Official History, emphasizing the importance of critiquing processes of substitution, oblivion, and distortion that configure the "erasure of women" in the field of History of Education, in brazilian production.