Lilia Moritz Schwarcz

Position
Visiting Faculty
Office
349 East Pyne
Bio/Description

Spring 2024: April 1-April 26

Profile

Lilia Moritz Schwarcz is Full Professor in Anthropology at the University of São Paulo and Visiting Professor at Princeton. Her main interests are History of the Slaves, Racial Theories, History of the Brazilian Empire, Academic Art, History of Anthropology. She published several books, such as Retrato em branco e negro (1987) [Portrait in White and Black], A longa viagem da biblioteca dos reis (2002) [The long journey of the king’s library], O sol do Brasil (2008) [The Sun of Brazil]; Um Enigma chamado Brasil -- with Andre Botelho -- [One enigma called Brazil] (2013), A Batalha do Avai – with Lucia Stumpf and Carlos Lima, (2014) [The Avai Battle] (20014); among them three in English: Spectacle of Races: Scientists, Institutions and Racial Theories in Brazil at the End of the XIXth Century (Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 1999) and The Emperors beard: D. Pedro II a tropical king, (Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 2004), and Brazil: a biography – with Heloisa Starling (Farrar Strauss and Giroux and Penguin UK, to be published in 2017). She was a curator of some exhibitions like: The great travel of the king’s Library (2006, Rio de Janeiro), and Nicolas-Antoine Taunay: a French translation of the tropics (2008, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro), A history of Brazil an interpretation by photographs, (with Boris Kossoy, 2013, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte), Mestizo Histories (with Adriano Pedrosa, 2014, São Paulo), Childhood histories (2016, São Paulo). In 2017 she is going to publish, with James Green, Brazil Reader (Duque University Press). She also edited a volume of the collection History of Brazilian Life in Brazil (Companhia das Letras, 2008), and was chief editor of História do Brasil Nação: 1808-2010 (Fundação Mapfre/ Objetiva) a six volumes series on Brazilian History.

She won five Jabuti Prizes – Brazil’s leading literary prize --for The Emperors beard ; History of private life; The Sun of Brazil; An enigma called Brazil, and Mestizo Histories (the catalogue). She also won, together with Lucia Stumpf and Carlos Lima, the Brazilian Academy of Letters prize for The Avai Battle.

She was fellow at the Guggenheim Foundation (2006/ 2007), and at the John Carter Brown Library (2007); was a visiting professor at Oxford, Leiden, Princeton and Brown Universities, a Tinker Professor at Columbia University (2008), and since 2011 is Global Professor at Princeton. She was a Member of the Advisor Group for the Harvard Brazilian Office, from 2006 to 2012. She holds a Commend of the Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit presented by the Presidency of the Republic (2010). She writes regularly for Brazilian newspapers such as: Folha de S Paulo, Estado de S. Paulo, Nexo. Since 2015 she is co-curator (for History) at MASP (Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo)