Title: Familles publiques ou familles privées : les politiques familiales sous le regard de la presse brésilienne (1930-1945)
PhD Supervisor & Co-supervisor: Nicole Bourbonnais and Graziella Moraes Dias Da Silva
Expected completion date: 2025
Her Ph.D. dissertation focuses on the discourse surrounding families and family policies in the Brazilian press from the 1930s to 1945. She wishes to study how the popular press, the black press, and the press targeting women put forward the model of the ideal bourgeois family advocated by the state or, on the contrary, present alternatives to the national model. Furthermore, if different family models are discussed in popular discourse, to what extent are these models integrated into society?
Her research includes the debate on different family models, such as single-parent families. It also incorporates a broader debate on international influences, such as those of feminist groups, in the discourse on the Brazilian family in the press. She will touch on the question of the family from a global and transnational point of view as well, thanks to articles published in the Brazilian press that allow a comparison between the Brazilian family and international families. Using an extensive database of Newspapers from this period, her research features a bottom-up approach, including the use of intersectionality, and contributes to family studies and the history of the press.
After completing a Bachelor in General History and German Studies at the University of Geneva with a year spent at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg, Clara Silveira finished her Master in General History at the University of Geneva with a Master's thesis titled "Restructurer la Famille, unifier la Race: Le Front Noir Brésilien et la Question Sociale (1931-1937), (Winner of the Arditi Prize). Alongside her work as a consultant in the private sector, she is a doctoral candidate in history and international politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute and an affiliate of the Gender Centre, as well as the Latino Lab of the Maison de l'Histoire at the University of Geneva.