Thomas E. Skidmore

Thomas E. Skidmore, 84, the prominent historian of Brazil and Professor Emeritus of Brown University, passed away on Saturday, June 11, 2016 in Westerly, R.I. He left a rich intellectual legacy in his many books and articles that analyze politics, society, and culture in twentieth-century Brazil.
Born in Troy, Ohio on July 22, 1932, Professor Skidmore graduated from Denison University in 1954. He received a Fulbright fellowship to study at Oxford University, where he earned a master's degree and met his future wife, Felicity Hall, the daughter of Robert Hall, Chief economic advisor to the British government from 1949 to 1962, and Margaret Hall, an economics fellow at Somerville College, Oxford.
He returned to the U. S. to complete his doctorate in European history at Harvard University in 1961, and then taught there until 1966. While at Harvard, Skidmore received a three-year research fellowship to study a Latin American country. He chose Brazil. The end result was his seminal work, Politics in Brazil: 1930-1964, An Experiment in Democracy, published in 1967 by Oxford University Press. Skidmore followed up with a political history of the military regime, Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964-85, published by Oxford University Press in 1987, that documented the political system under the dictatorship and the gradual return to democratic rule in the early 1980s. Taken together, these two volumes offer the most comprehensive survey of modern Brazilian history in English and have become classics in the history of Republican Brazil.
In the fall of 1966, he moved with his family to Wisconsin, Madison, where he became a Full Professor at the University of Wisconsin. While at Wisconsin, Skidmore wrote "Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought" (Oxford University Press, 1974; Duke University Press, 1992), which traces the changes in notions of race in Brazil from debates during slavery to the eugenic and nationalist movements of the twentieth century. He continued publishing on this topic with an edited volume, "Idea of Race in Latin America, 1970-1940" (University of Texas Press, 1990). Other publications followed.
Professor Skidmore moved to Brown University in 1988 as the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Latin American History and taught there until his retirement in 2000. Skidmore served as president of the Latin American Studies Association and of the New England Council of Latin American Studies.
Among the most well-known Brazilianists, on two occasions he made public statements about the political situation in Brazil that caused confrontations with the military dictatorship. Many academics, politicians, and journalists came to his defense, considering the actions of the Federal Police as unconstitutional and a violation of academic freedom.
Skidmore is survived by his wife, Felicity; his three sons, David, James, and Robert; and three grandchildren. A celebration of his life will be held later in the fall at Brown University, in Providence, R.I. For online condolences please visit Buckler-Johnston.com