Region, Nation, and Social Science:An Interview with Joseph L. Love on 50 Years of Studying Brazil

Abstract

In late September 2016, the Lemann Institute for Brazilian Studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) hosted a symposium on regionalism in Brazilian history to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Professor Joseph L. Love's arrival at Illinois. Organized by the Institute's director, Professor Jerry Dávila, the symposium brought together historians from the United States and Brazil for a day-long discussion of an issue that continues to attract scholarly attention in both countries. Love himself contributed to the study of Brazilian regionalism with two landmark studies: Rio Grande do Sul and Brazilian Regionalism, 1882–1930 (1971) and São Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889–1937 (1980). The latter was produced alongside John Wirth's Minas Gerais in the Brazilian Federation, 1889–1937 (1977) and Robert Levine's Pernambuco in the Brazilian Federation, 1889–1937 (1978) as part of a larger project conceived and carried out through a decade's worth of unprecedentedly close collaboration. At Illinois, Love inspired hundreds of undergraduates with his award-winning teaching and trained a bi-national cohort of graduate students who have gone on to careers of great distinction in Brazil and in the United States.