The first academic history of French women’s access to the university and professional careers was published in 1937. The author, Edmée Charrier, was a member of the French branch of the International Federation of University Women and a lawyer; the dissertation, L’évolution intellectuelle feminine, had been defended in the Faculty of Law at the University of Paris. Her 572-page treatise adopted an empirical and comparative method to document the evolution of women’s presence in the intellectual life of the nation, drawing heavily on available statistics to demonstrate “progress” but also to highlight existing gender inequalities. Her thesis established a narrative about women’s access to higher education which has remained remarkably stable over the intervening eighty years. Inspired by the comparative approach of contemporary social scientific analyses, she concluded with a chapter about women in four highly qualified professions (medicine, law, engineering and university professorships) in other European countries and the other continents although she drew no conclusions from this panorama. While Charrier is undoubtedly the best-known Frenchwoman to write a dissertation about girls’ education, she was not alone. By the 1930s, women students were less of an anomaly within the university and their number in doctoral studies was rising. Indeed, two other women in the Faculty of Law in Paris, Zénaïde Tsourikoff and Sylviane Illio, also wrote about the history of girls’ education focusing on North African girls’ experiences. This paper approaches these women’s scholarship from a perspective that highlights the gendered and imperial nature of the university setting. Who were these women and their male directors in the inter-war French university? Edmée Charrier was French, but her director was an Algerian-born Professor of Law, active within the Alliance Israélite Universelle. The two other women are virtually unknown but both spent time in North Africa at a moment when Algerian girls’ opportunities were slowly expanding, but also nationalist demands with respect to education. What relationship did these women have to the production of knowledge about girls’ education in imperial contexts? Their dissertation topics bear the trace of feminist convictions, but how did imperial positioning factor into their research methods and questions? What sort of archives underlay their scholarship, framing narratives about the history of girls’ education in France and particularly Algeria since the 1930s? The overall goal of this paper is to explore how the first generation of women who wrote dissertations participated in the writing of educational historiography, analyzing the ways they queried, or not, dominant narratives about education and progress. The dissertations of Tsourikoff and Illio, in particular, offer an opportunity to examine how the experience of living and researching this topic in colonial Algeria shaped the stories they told of a highly stratified society where European, Arab, Kabyle and Jewish women had very different experiences. In our contemporary concern to decolonize the history of education, the voices of these women in the 1930s offer a perspective that adds a gendered and racialized complexity to a history that remains under-researched and very male-oriented to this day.

This paper is part of an ongoing doctoral research project in the Postgraduate Program in Education at the Faculty of Philosophy and Sciences (FFC), Universidade Estadual Paulista - UNESP "Júlio de Mesquita Filho", Marília Campus/Brazil. The aim of the analysis is to identify and systematize, according to "a new cultural distribution" (De Certeau, 1979), documents from a Normal School in the city of Marília/São Paulo - Brazil, run by the Congregation of the Apostle Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, entitled Escola Normal Livre Sagrado Coração de Jesus, which was a place and time for training teachers between 1943 and 1970. For De Certeau (1979), the historian's first job is the "new cultural distribution", which consists of producing these documents, by recopying, transcribing or photographing these objects, while at the same time changing their place and status. Thus, looking at the history of Normal Schools in Brazil, we can consider that it is necessary to seek an understanding of why the school teaches and what it teaches (Chervel, 1990). These are the results of a historical analysis engaged in the field of the History of Education, centered on documentary research, privileging the works found in the school's collection, today Colégio Sagrado Coração de Jesus as a documentary corpus, where the following questions arose: what was teacher training like at this school of the Congregation of the Apostle Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart? Did they follow the curricula of the State-run Normal Schools? Did religion influence the learning/curriculum? The Sacred Heart of Jesus Free Normal School is part of the Congregation of the Apostle Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, founded by Mother Clelia in Piacenza, Italy, which spread to Brazil in the 1900s with the mission of promoting education and preserving the Catholic faith and Italian culture for immigrants and their children who found a place for rural work in Brazil. Among the documents analyzed in "a new cultural office", it can be seen that this confessional school was the first to offer teacher training courses in the city and that its library, called "Biblioteca Rui Barbosa", was made up of a large collection of manuals, newspapers and magazines that were important in the teaching-learning process at the time. As a conclusion, he considers that the Escola Normal Livre Sagrado Coração de Jesus was recognized as a place and time for training teachers by the state government, both because of the large and complete installation in the central area of the city, with 10,000m² of space and also because all the teachers were registered with the State Department of Education, where teachers were trained to serve the population of Mariliense and the region, which was expanding educationally.

A presente comunicação é parte da pesquisa de Doutorado, em andamento, do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação da Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC), da Universidade Estadual Paulista - UNESP “Júlio de Mesquita Filho”, Campus de Marília/Brasil. A análise tem como objetivo identificar e sistematizar, de acordo com “uma nova repartição cultural” (De Certeau, 1979) documentos de uma Escola Normal da cidade de Marília/São Paulo – Brasil, da Congregação das Irmãs Apóstolas Missionárias do Sagrado Coração, intitulada Escola Normal Livre Sagrado Coração de Jesus, que se constituiu como lugar e tempo de formação de professoras, entre 1943 e 1970. Para De Certeau (1979) o primeiro trabalho do historiador é a “nova repartição cultural”, onde consiste em produzir tais documentos, pelo fato de recopiar, transcrever ou fotografar estes objetos mudando ao mesmo tempo o seu lugar e o seu estatuto. Deste modo, transcorrendo perspectivas da história das Escolas Normais no Brasil, pode-se considerar que é necessário buscar a compreensão do porquê a escola ensina e o que ensina (Chervel, 1990). Trata-se de resultados de uma análise histórica engajada no campo da História da Educação, centrada em pesquisa documental, privilegiando as obras encontradas no acervo da escola, hoje Colégio Sagrado Coração de Jesus como corpus documental, onde surgiu os seguintes questionamentos: como era a formação de professores nessa escola da Congregação das Irmãs Apóstolas Missionárias do Sagrado Coração? Seguiam os currículos das Escolas Normais regidas pelo Estado? A religião influenciava nos aprendizados/currículo? A Escola Normal Livre Sagrado Coração de Jesus faz parte da Congregação das Irmãs Apóstolas Missionárias do Sagrado Coração, fundada por Madre Clélia em Piacenza, na Itália, que foi se disseminando no Brasil nos anos 1900 em diante com a missão de favorecer a educação e conservando a fé católica e cultura italiana aos imigrantes e seus filhos que encontraram no Brasil um espaço para o trabalho rural. Entre os documentos analisados em "uma nova repartição cultural", pode-se perceber que essa escola confessional foi a primeira a oferecer curso de formação de professores na cidade e que a sua biblioteca, intitulada “Biblioteca Rui Barbosa” foi composta por um grande acervo de manuais, jornais e revistas importantes no processo de ensino-aprendizagem da época. Como conclusão, considera que a Escola Normal Livre Sagrado Coração de Jesus ficou reconhecida como lugar e tempo de formação de professoras pelo Governo do Estado, quer seja pela ampla e completa instalação na área central da cidade, com 10.000m² de espaço e também por todos os docentes serem registrados no Departamento de Educação do Estado, onde se formavam professores que atendiam a população mariliense e região, em expansão educacional.

As queer (non-binary trans and gay) scholars, in this paper we explore the potential of a history of education committed to recovering from Western colonial violence trans, gender nonconforming and queer experiences. Starting from historical accounts (Actualidade 1879, O Comércio do Porto 1879, Lusitano & Froilaz 1879, O Tripeiro 1926) of António Custodio das Neves (1858-1888), born in Portugal’s Douro region, assigned female at birth yet growing up male, and emerging from such accounts as the ‘Woman Man’/‘Man Woman’ [‘Mulher-Homem’ /‘Homem-Mulher’], we confront ‘colonialist practices of avoidance and erasure’ (Barad 2017, 76; 2023, 37) invisibilising gender-nonconforming, nonheteronormative existences like António’s. Through what the literary scholar and historian of transatlantic slavery Saidiya Hartman and the queer/feminist scholar and quantum field theoretician Karen Barad – both committed to troubling the machinations of colonialism – have figured methodologically as ‘critical fabulation’ (Hartman 2008) and ‘reconfiguration’ (‘material imagination’ as ‘embodied re-membering’/‘re-turning’) (Barad 2015, 2014), we develop a reparative trans educational history of António’s experiences, venturing into what ‘could’, ‘might’ or ‘might yet have been’ (Hartman 2008, 5; Barad 2017, 56; 2015, 389). This is a history ‘with and against the archives’ of a past ‘that has yet to be done’ (Martins forthcoming; Hartman 2008, 13), involving ‘times, places, beings [that] bleed through one another’ (Barad 2014, 179) into our present. It addresses ‘meaningful absence’, ‘void’, or ‘gaps’ as ‘excess’ – a ‘lively tension, a desiring orientation toward being/becoming’ (Martins forthcoming; Barad 2015, 396; Hartman 2008, 5, 12). Trans/gender nonconforming experiences thus did (not) yet exist (if) only (differently) ‘at their intersection with institutions of disciplinary power’ (Martins forthcoming; Heyam 2022, Mesch 2020) constraining the limits of their non/existence (Barad 2017, Hartman 2008; Foucault 1972, 1980). Beyond Modern notions of linear temporality that stabilise boundaries between past, present and future (e.g. Thyssen 2024) governing dominant ‘fictions of history’, we endeavour to rescue ‘impossible stories’ (Hartman 2008, 10) ‘that are not the histories … archives wish to recount (Martins forthcoming, Steedman 2001). We advance a ‘“recombinant narrative,” which “loops the strands” of incommensurate accounts and … weaves present, past, and future’ (Hartman 2008, 12), as ‘a work of mourning more accountable to… the victims of … colonialist … violence’ (Barad 2017, 56). Using 'trans as an identity and analytic’ (Lehner 2019, 45) also for ‘visual technologies’ reifying a ‘gender binary system’ and an ‘aesthetic of sexual difference’ (Lehner 2019, Martins forthcoming), we flesh out trans experience anew from a situated mesh of time, place, age, gender, ethnicity, and class, resisting closure (Best & Hartman 2005) and foreclosure of ‘possibilities of justice-to-come’ (Barad 2017, 62). Thereby undoing radical differences of male/female, Self/Other, here/there, and now/then coemerged with Modern Western colonialist ventures (Lehner 2019, 45), we make a larger case for historiography of education’s need to trouble colonialisms that continue to haunt it as it reproduces systems of power sustaining a ‘grammar of violence’/‘-cis colonial gender binaries’ (Martins forthcoming; Vaid-Menon 2020; Vaid-Menon in Lehner 2019, 61) and ‘difference as apartheid’ (Barad 2014, 170; Trinh 1988, 2011; Anzaldúa 1987).

The present work aims to discuss the epistemological and methodological potential to the notion of "historicizing", as mobilized by Thomas Popkewitz and, specifically, how such a notion can be deployed to think about Histories of Education that can be increasingly more diverse and framed through styles of reasoning other than those of a monolithic, Eurocentric and homogenizing historiography. As such, it is important to contextualize that the discussion that we intend to have here happens through a discursive approach to educational research. Recognizing that the multiple post-structuralist perspectives in education research are, simultaneously, anti-realist and also take their objects of analysis as socio-historical and contingent discursive formations, firstly we'll debate some authors who are currently used in the Brazilian educational field and who, even if against their will, are widely considered to be important proponents of post-structuralist research. The authors in question are Michel Foucault and his notion of "discursive regularities", Ernesto Laclau and the "hegemonic construction", Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari with their philosophical-artistic idea of the discursive "rhizome" and, finally, the theoretical-methodological proposition mobilized through Thomas Popkewitz's "historicizing". In this first stage of the discussion, the objective was to contrast different discursive strategies used to problematize discourse itself by prominent contemporary thinkers, highlighting these strategies's potential and, perhaps, limitations, as they themselves become tools of unification/hegemonization of the discourse that they proposed to deconstruct. In a second moment, using some anecdotal empirical data from previous researches, we'll discuss how a comparative and discontinuous historical analysis can contribute significantly to historical studies in the educational field, seeking to denaturalize discourses already sedimented by hegemonic historiographic rhetoric, discursively contextualize the enunciative conditions of truths about schooling in different socio-historical moments and, finally, serve as a possible strategy for telling new, different stories about where, what and for whom Education is at the service of.

O presente trabalho tem como seu alvo discutir as potencialidades epistemológicas e metodológicas da noção de "historicizar", como esta é mobilizada por Thomas Popkewitz e, em específico, como tal noção pode ser empregada por investigações pensando em Histórias da Educação que possam ser crescentemente mais diversas e enquadradas através de estilos de raciocínio que não àqueles de uma historiografia monolítica, eurocentrada e homogeneizante. Dessa forma, é importante situar a discussão que se pretende aqui travar através de uma abordagem discursiva para as pesquisas educacionais. Reconhecendo as múltiplas perpectivas pós-estrututuralistas enquanto simultaneamente antirrealistas e tomando seus objetos de análise enquanto formações discursivas sócio-históricas e contingentes, em um primeiro momento serão postos em diálogo alguns autores que são utilizados contemporaneamente no campo educacional brasileiro e que, ainda que a contragosto, são amplamente considerados como importantes expoentes do pós-estruturalismo. Os autores em questão são Michel Foucault e sua noção de "regularidades discursivas", Ernesto Laclau e a "construção hegemônica", Giles Deleuze e Félix Guattari com ideia filosófico-artística do "rizoma" discursivo e, por fim, a proposição teórico-metodológica mobilizada através do "historicizar" de Thomas Popkewitz. Nesta primeira etapa da discussão, o objetivo foi pôr em contraste diferentes estratégias discursivas empregadas para problematizar o discurso por proeminentes pensadores, salientando suas potencialidades e, talvez, limitações, ao tornarem-se elas mesmas ferramentas de unificação/hegemonização do discurso que se propuseram a desconstruir. Em um segundo momento, lançando mão de alguns dados empíricos anedóticos de pesquisas anteriores, discutiremos como uma análise histórica comparativa e descontínua pode contribuir significantivamente para estudos históricos no campo educacional, buscando desnaturalizar discursos já sedimentados pelas retóricas historiográficas hegemônicas, contextualizar discursivamente as condições enunciativas de verdades sobre o ensino escolarizado em diferentes momentos sócio-históricos e, por fim, servir enquanto possível estratégia para o contar de novas, diferentes histórias sobre aonde, o que e para quem está a serviço a Educação.