Laura de Mello e Souza awarded the 2024 International Prize for History CISH
The fourth edition of the International Prize for History CISH 2024 will be awarded to Laura de Mello e Souza, for her intellectual and academic career, alongside the exceptional quality, originality and uniqueness of her work.
For more than four decades, Laura de Mello e Souza has engaged with various trends and waves in historiography, both international and Brazilian, contributing to the progress of historical research and to the dialogue between cultures, opening many new perspectives and training generations of scholars. Social and cultural history have always been her fields of choice, but she has also combined them with political, religious, and literary history.
Among her many publications, many translated into different languages, a few may be mentioned here:
- Os Desclassificados do Ouro, published in 1983 (translated into French: Les déclassés de l’or. La pauvreté dans le Minas Gerais au XVIIIe siècle, Paris: Le Poisson volant éditeur, 2020);
- O Diabo na Terra de Santa Cruz (published in English as The Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross: Witchcraft, Slavery, and Popular Religion in Colonial Brazil, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003; and in Spanish as El diablo en la tierra de Santa Cruz: hechichería y religiosidad popular en el Brasil colonial, Madrid: Alianza, 1993);
- O Sol e a Sombra: política e administração na América portuguesa do século XVIII (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2006);
- Cláudio Manuel da Costa: o letrado dividido (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2011).
The award will be delivered during the ICHS/CISH General Assembly in Tokyo on October 27, 2024.
Please find here the Board’s statement for the 2024 International Prize for History CISH to Laura de Mello e Souza.