Interview with Professor Mariza Soares

Abstract

Mariza de Carvalho Soares is a Professor of History of Africa, retired by the Fluminense Federal University and still active in the Postgraduate Program in History. She is currently a researcher in the Anthropology Department of the National Museum, Brasil, where she works in the Ethnology and Ethnography sector, as curator of the African exposition, and as consultant for the project "Marfins Africanos no Mundo Atlântico: uma reavaliação dos marfins luso-africanos [African Marfins in the Atlantic World: a revaluation of Portuguese-African marfins]", financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology of Portugal, among other projects. They are of its authorship Devotos da cor. Identidade étnica, relgiosidade e escravidão. século XVIII (Civilização Brasileira, 2000); Rotas Atlânticas da Diáspora Africana: da baía do Benim ao Rio de Janeiro (Ed. UFF, 2007); People of Faith. Slavery and African Catholics in Eighteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (Duke University Press, 2011), as well as several other books, chapters and articles published in Brazil and abroad. In this interview, we have a testimony collected before the fire that destroyed much of the collection of the National Museum, Brasil. In addition to its content, of great interest to the community of researchers and to society, we consider its pertinent publication as a way of remembering a little known collection. It is time to unite and rebuild, because the culture in the country resists.