Paper Short Abstract:

It is known that several women have had their intellectual relevance and visionary, pioneering or transgressive character eclipsed in the history of anthropology. As supporting characters, some are only mentioned in quick passages or footnotes in biographies, as was the case for a long time with Dina Dreyfus (1911-1999), most often referred to as “Lévi-Strauss' wife” or part of the “Lévi-Strauss couple”. However, in the short period she was in Brazil, between 1935 and 1938, Dina played a pioneering role in the production of ethnographic images of folk culture and indigenous peoples in the country.

Paper Abstract:

They were there: imaginations and inscriptions of Dina Dreyfus in Brazil reflects on Dina Dreyfus' journeys in Brazil, between 1935 and 1938, based on the inscriptions and imaginations of her passage present in photographs, films and texts of the time, a period of institutionalization of Anthropology as a discipline in the country. Ethnographic research in the field involved not only collecting objects for French museums, but also the largest photographic and film production in the career of Claude Lévi-Strauss, her field partner and husband. At the invitation of Mário de Andrade, director of the Municipal Department of Culture in São Paulo, Dreyfus taught a pioneering course in ethnography and folklore, in which he trained various civil servants and students to collect ethnographic materials, teaching different ethnographic techniques, including how to make visual and sound recordings. These guidelines were published in the manual “Practical Instructions for Physical and Cultural Anthropology Research - volume 1”. The course was the catalyst for the foundation of the Ethnography and Folklore Society in 1937 and the Folklore Research Mission in 1938, in which pioneering sound and visual recordings of Brazilian folk culture were made.