"Não houvesse no Brasil esses autodidatas precursores": docentes e a produção do Ensino Superior de História no Rio Grande do Norte (1955-1991)

Abstract

In 1955, the Faculdade de Filosofia de Natal (FAFIN) was created, which became the Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras (FFCL) in 1963, and had its courses incorporated into the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) in 1968. In this process, a group of intellectuals had a fundamental participation in the idealization and initial constitution of these spaces, the precursors, professors who participated in the foundation and structuring of the courses in their first decades. The general objective of the dissertation is to analyze how the precursors João Wilson Mendes Melo, Tarcísio da Natividade Medeiros and Hélio Dantas produced the teaching space of the History Course at FAFIN/FFCL/UFRN, from 1955 to 1991. Their participation in the foundation and structuring of the curriculum; I analyzed his theoretical and historiographical conceptions through his writings in the Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico do Rio Grande do Norte (IHGRN); and I discussed the teaching of these subjects in the History Course, seeking to understand similarities and differences with what they proposed in the production at IHGRN. I use as sources the minutes of faculty meetings, chair/discipline programs, articles published in Revista do IHGRN, articles published in Revista História – UFRN 30 anos, and interviews given by professors available on the DVD 50 anos de História and in the Laboratório de História Oral da UFRN (LABHO). I articulate the concepts of Space Production and Representation (LEFEBVRE, 2013), Intellectual Mediator (HANSEN; GOMES, 2016) Intellectual, Sociability and Generation (SIRINELLI, 1986). I work with the critical qualitative analysis of the sources, and with the approach of oral sources. Investigating how the precursors produced the training space of the FAFIN/FFCL/UFRN History Course, and their methodological and historiographical options when teaching and researching, helped to understand aspects of the History produced and taught in Rio Grande do Norte and in Brazil.