About
Jerry Dávila holds the Jorge Paulo Lemann Chair in Brazilian History at the University of Illinois and serves as the Executive Director of the Illinois Global Institute, established in 2019 to promote international area studies and global themes. His research focuses on the influence of racial thought in public policy in Brazil, as well as the state and social movements in the twentieth century. Dávila has authored several books, including Hotel Trópico: Brazil and the Challenge of African Decolonization, which received the Latin Studies Association Brazil Section Book Prize, and Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945. He has taught in various international academic settings, including the Federal University of Minas Gerais and the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, and has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of São Paulo. Dávila has contributed to publications such as the New York Times and the Cairo Review, discussing military rule and redemocratization in South America, and is a co-author of A History of World Societies. He has served as President of the Conference on Latin American History, an affiliate of the American Historical Association dedicated to Latin American studies.
Research topics
- Political Science
- Humanities
- Philosophy
- Sociology
- Computer Science
- Gender studies
- Chemistry
- Demography
- Law
- Criminology
Selected publications
“E lá voltei a me encontrar com a África”
Afro-Ásia · 2025-03-12
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingHomenagem a Alberto Vasconcellos da Costa e Silva
A Miscarriage of Justice: Women's Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil
Hispanic American Historical Review · 2024 · 20 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Sociology
- Political Science
- Law
A Miscarriage of Justice is a fascinating study of the ways in which laws, institutions, medical professionals, and other public figures imprinted norms of gender, race, and class on women in manners that limited their effective citizenship and their well-being. The book innovates in how it maps complexities and nuances in the relationships between poor women, health workers, police, and laws.Focused on Brazil's federal capital of Rio de Janeiro, the study is situated in a society that was institutionally regulated by the 1890 penal code, which “increased women's criminal responsibility for the crimes of abortion and infanticide and criminalized the illegal practice of medicine” (p. 4). Roth explores how the policing of abortion and of infant death extended to include efforts to regulate pregnancy, maternity, and infancy.The first chapters of the book examine the history of subjectivities that were brought to laws and to institutional practices. At the center of these subjectivities were judgments about women in situations of poverty. Such judgments were fed by legacies of the slave regime, by eugenic thought and its projections in emerging practices of criminology, and by patriarchal projections about honor and gender roles. Roth explains that “the end of slavery and the rise of republicanism forced all women's reproductive lives—but particularly those of poor women—into regimes of institutional regulation” (p. 5). Why? Because in the thinking of a set of actors including physicians, criminologists, and others involved in crafting laws and policies, “women reproduced the country that elites were intent on shaping” (p. 5).Roth considers how the beliefs and practices crafted into public policy by these actors intersected in disparate treatment of pregnancy and childbirth. Such policies and practices sometimes resulted in police investigation and in criminal charges, the records of which serve as the major source base for the study. The very rich array of cases makes possible a close reading of individual people's experiences and perspectives, as well as an analysis of the ways in which institutions and authorities acted on those people.The latter chapters, through a rich reading of a range of criminal cases and police investigations, provide a careful and complex reconstruction of women and communities contending with the often perilous intersections between infant death and the law. Roth produces an insightful and instructive interpretation of policing as something less homogeneous and encompassing than it often can seem. Roth states that within public institutions and law enforcement, “structural inconsistencies shaped individual ones” (p. 159). Roth points to the high rates of turnover, from the chief of police to the ranks of civil police, that resulted in inconsistent policing practices.This lack of institutional cohesion and consistency gave individual police officers wider latitude to interpret incidents that could be charged as abortion or infanticide. In turn the lack of cohesion and consistency also made police into arbiters of the situations of social class, race, marriage status, and other characteristics, which they employed to determine whether an infant death was a crime. Roth also considers the “stigmas of dishonor” that were produced by police investigations and the fear that this imposed on people and communities. A Miscarriage of Justice also stands out for carefully reading how the cases were shaped by race, class, and judgments about them.The book includes a detailed afternote on sources that will serve as a practical guide for scholars interested in these histories and that, together with the careful and clear discussions of approaches and methods throughout the book, makes A Miscarriage of Justice a significant contribution to the history of gender, race, class, public institutions, and reproductive life.
Chapter 2 Gilberto Freyre Racial Populism and Ethnic Nationalism
Berghahn Books · 2022-09-27 · 1 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingRAÇA, MEMÓRIA E EDUCAÇÃO NA FORMAÇÃO NACIONAL DOS ESTADOS UNIDOS (XIX-XXI)
História da Educação · 2021 · 1 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Political Science
- Humanities
- Political Science
RESUMO Situado no contexto do movimento Black Lives Matter, o texto analisa momentos na história dos direitos civis durante o período da escravidão e no tempo pós-abolição, analisando o papel do judiciário e seus vínculos com questões de acesso e igualdade na educação. Ao colocar de lado a metanarrativa positivista sobre a expansão progressiva dos direitos na história norteamericana, analisamos momentos em que a ação do judiciário reforçou a escravidão e a segregação racial não apenas como marcos dessa história de políticas raciais, mas também como tentativas frustradas por parte de indivíduos e de movimentos sociais para expandir o acesso aos direitos humanos. Refletimos, ainda, sobre as maneiras com que a noção positivista de um avanço contínuo dos direitos tem coincidido com projetos de comemoração, memorialização, e romantização do passado escravagista, bem como de figuras ligadas à defesa da escravidão e da segregação racial.
Raça, memória e educação na formação nacional dos Estados Unidos
2021
1st authorCorresponding- Humanities
- Humanities
- Political Science
Placed in the context of the Black Lives Mattermovement, this article analyzes moments in the history of civil rights under slavery and the post-emancipation era, analyzing the role of the judiciary and its connection to questions of access and equality in education. By putting aside the positivist meta-narrative that the United States has experienced a progressive expansion of rights, we see moments when the action of the courts reinforced slavery and racial segegation not just as milestones in the history of racial politics, but also as frustrated efforts by individuals and social movements to expand access to human rights. We also see ways in which the positivist notion of a constant advance of rights has coincided with projects to commemorate, memorialize and romanticize the history of slavery, along with the leading figures associated with slavery and segregation.
Concluding Essay: Rethinking Latin America in the New Ethnic Studies
2020-05-22
book-chapterSenior author3. “The Lovers of the African Race”
2020-12-31
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding2. Africa and the Independent Foreign Policy
2020-12-31
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingStanford University Press eBooks · 2020
- Computer Science
- Computer Science
Gilberto Freyre: Racial Populism and Ethnic Nationalism
2019-04-01 · 13 citations
article1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 2 shared
Jeffrey Lesser
Emory University
- 1 shared
Nick Mangan
- 1 shared
Patrick Sharkey
- 1 shared
Mark Mazower
Columbia University
- 1 shared
M.P. Greaves
University of Cambridge
- 1 shared
Matthew L. Jones
University Hospital Coventry
- 1 shared
Dominic Cheung
Columbia University
- 1 shared
Chris Chang
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Awards & honors
- Latin Studies Association Brazil Section Book Prize
- Choice Outstanding Title for 2013
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