Marília Corrêa is a WCED Postdoctoral Fellow for the 2019-21 academic years. She completed her Ph.D. in history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019 and is currently working on her book manuscript, Breaking Soldiers: Military Dictatorship, Expelled Servicemen, and Trauma in Brazil, 1964-2014, which studies the trajectories of officers and soldiers who were expelled from the military and persecuted during the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985). Focusing on the experiences of servicemen seen as communists and subversives, she aims to expand historical approaches to class, gender and race in Brazil, exploring how the dictatorship subjected these men to traumas that altered their sense of belonging and showing that military rule had overarching effects that transcended the era of the dictatorship itself. Examining written archives and oral histories, her research connects military history and social history, showing that the events transpiring in Brazil during the second half of the twentieth-century were not only significant in a national context but also to the array of dictatorships in South America.
As a postdoctoral fellow, Marília will continue to develop her book manuscript. She wrote an article for the April 2020 issue of The Americas, titled “Military Resistance to the Brazilian Coup: The Fight of Officers and Soldiers against Authoritarian Rule, 1964-67.” Another article manuscript exploring the experiences of low-ranking soldiers and sailors with the Amnesty Movement during Brazil’s transition to democracyis in preparation.
Education
- Ph.D., History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2019
- M.A., Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013
- B.A., International Relations, Faculdades de Campinas (FACAMP), Campinas-SP Brazil, 2010
Awards and Honors
- Lemann Institute Graduate Fellowship (2017 & 2019)
- Illinois Program for Research in Humanities Graduate Fellowship (2017-18)
- Nelle M. Signor Graduate Scholarship in International Relations (2016)
- Tinker Foundation Field Research Grant (2012 & 2014)
