Life after Death: Jacinta Maria de Santana and the "mummy" of the Law School in São Paulo (1900-2023)

• Grant number: 24/08867-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: October 01, 2024
• End date: September 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Lúcia Helena Oliveira Silva
• Grantee: Livia Maria Tiede
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project follows the story of Jacinta, a mummy who was displayed for almost thirty years at the turn of the century in São Paulo. From her embalming in the early 1900s to the burial in 1929, the Brazilian press, Black newspapers, medical journals, and literary narratives reported about her life. She was a Black female who became (in)famous in the Law school as a mummy. All characters of this story-including journalists, activists, students, writers, and professors-resided in a city that was growing fast. At the beginning of the century, Jacinta's corpse embodied a desire for scientific progress. Her body also served to preserve hierarchies of race and gender; "science" that objectified and pathologized Black, female bodies and reified systems of hegemony. To understand the meaning of her mummified body to the intersections of race, gender and class is the purpose of this research project.