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Matheus Gato is the Director of Afro-Cebrap, Brazil. He is a sociologist specializing largely in race relations in Brazil. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of São Paulo in 2015. Gato’s work focuses on processes of racialization that marked the end of Brazilian slavery (1888) in the state of Maranhão, home to the highest concentration of black descendants in Brazil. Through ethnographic and archival research, Gato analyzes the racial configuration of urban space in the nineteenth century, explores the trajectory of black intellectuals of the period, and conducts close readings of novels and short stories that reveal the formation of black citizenship in post-abolition Brazil. He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and has participated extensively in the Global Collaborative Network “Race and Citizenship in the Americas,” an internationalization initiative led by Princeton University and the University of São Paulo (USP).
The work he will present explores the role of literature as a “source” for historical and sociological interpretation of race in post-abolition Brazil. A central question arises when considering the analysis of this crucial phase in the formation of Brazilian society, which grapples with the scarcity of oral narratives or written testimonies produced by free or enslaved Black individuals who experienced the end of slavery. This paper aims to address this gap by examining how two Afro-Brazilian writers, Astolfo Marques (1876-1918) and Nascimento Moraes (1882-1958), interpreted the transformations of an imperial society divided between citizens and captives into a republic divided between whites and Blacks in their novels, respectively, “A Nova Aurora” (1913) and “Vencidos e Degenerados” (1915).
Moderated by Professor Sidney Chalhoub.
In collaboration with: History Department, Brazil Studies Program at David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies