Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Elizabeth “Betsy” Winchell Kiddy (1957–2014)

2015; Duke University Press; Volume: 95; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2870812

1527-1900

Judy Bieber,

Sports, Gender, and Society

Betsy Kiddy, a scholar of Brazilian history and the African diaspora in the Americas, died of cancer on September 29, 2014, in her home in Reading, Pennsylvania. She is survived by her husband of 23 years, Gregory Kiddy, her parents Tony and Harriet Winchell, siblings Susan, David, and Thomas Winchell, and three nephews. Betsy's contributions were many — as dedicated scholar, educator and mentor, advocate for interdisciplinary studies, capoeira practitioner, singer, musician, composer, dancer, and world traveler. Her zest for life infused both her scholarship and her teaching.Betsy was born in Kingston, New York, on November 26, 1957, and was raised in Westchester County, New York. She received her undergraduate degree in music composition from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, in 1980. Betsy then moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she discovered the Afro-Brazilian martial art capoeira. This, as well as her appreciation of Afro-Brazilian music, motivated her to pursue Brazilian studies as an academic career. Accompanying her on that journey was her husband, Gregory Kiddy, whom she married in 1991. They enjoyed a close, devoted relationship and a mutual love of Brazil and its people.Betsy pursued graduate degrees in Latin American studies at the University of New Mexico, completing her doctorate in 1998. Her interdisciplinary training included history, gender studies, literature, anthropology, religion, philosophy, and folklore. I had the good fortune to serve as her dissertation adviser and to collaborate across departments with her other principal mentors, the late Fred “Ted” Sturm (philosophy and religious studies) and Jon Tolman (Spanish and Portuguese). Betsy's dissertation, “Brotherhoods of Our Lady of the Rosary of the Blacks: Community and Devotion in Minas Gerais, Brazil,” was published as Blacks of the Rosary: Memory and History in Minas Gerais, Brazil by Pennsylvania State University Press in 2005.This research quickly established Betsy's reputation as a creative and innovative scholar. It contributed to an unresolved debate about the extent to which Catholic brotherhoods were sites of religious resistance or accommodation for their slave and ex-slave members. Betsy produced new evidence to argue that the Rosary brotherhoods served as sites to perpetuate African practices within their congados rituals. Her background in music theory coupled with ethnographic fieldwork with Rosary brotherhoods in Oliveira and Serro, Minas Gerais, enabled her to uncover the persistence of African-based musical forms, oral traditions, and linguistic retentions about which the documentary record remained silent. This interdisciplinary methodology enabled her to then reread colonial-era documents with a critical eye for clues that might otherwise remain opaque.For Betsy, however, her research was more than an intellectual puzzle. She was not the sort of scholar to remain at a polite analytical distance from her subject matter. She became deeply connected to the congados performers whom she came to know. For her, these people were not “informants”; they were simply people. She loved those people, cared about their cares, provided financial assistance when she could, and mourned the deaths of those who died prematurely from poverty-related conditions. She provided personal funds to support the Oliveira festival. Betsy pursued what academics would call “best practices” not because the rules told her to do so, but because she was an exceptionally compassionate human being. Heloísa Bispo, the long-term administrative secretary of the Casa dos Congadeiros of Oliveira, upon learning of Betsy's death, spoke of her simplicity, her generous heart, and her honorary status as little sister (irmãzinha) of the Rosary.Upon receiving her PhD, Betsy was awarded a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in fall 1998 at the Johns Hopkins University, where she worked with the late A. J. R. Russell-Wood. She then began extending her research on black religious brotherhoods to colonial Recife and Rio de Janeiro. Subsequently, she took a two-year position at Kenyon College. She was then hired in 2001 at Albright College, where she spent the balance of her academic career as a member of the History Department and director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program. Shortly before her death, she was promoted to the rank of professor.At Albright, Betsy distinguished herself as an exemplary teacher, scholar, and advocate for Latin American studies. Numerous students testified that she changed their lives for the better and that upon graduation she was able to transition with ease and grace from mentor to friend. Some students chose to major or minor in Latin American studies simply to have the opportunity to take more classes with her. Betsy taught some 20 different courses on various aspects of Latin American and Caribbean history. Perhaps her most innovative interdisciplinary offering was a hands-on course on revolutionary printmaking cotaught with art professor Kristen Woodward. Her educational mission also extended to the community of Reading through outreach to local elementary and high schools, organizing capoeira workshops, and serving on the board of Reading's Hispanic Center.Betsy's service to the profession included a four-year term on the executive committee of the Brazilian Studies Association and stints as executive board member, vice president, and president of the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies. She also was an active member of the Latin American Studies Association, the Conference on Latin American History, the American Historical Association, the African Studies Association, the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies, and the International Water History Association.For the last several years, Betsy was working on a second project, which unfortunately did not come to fruition in the form of a second book. Her approach again emphasized the human dimension, this time in relation to the history of Brazil's mighty São Francisco River. Her inquiry began with a journey, a pilgrimage of sorts, along much of the river's 2,000-mile length in a traditional steamer (gaiola). This was the origin for an expansive project that sought to capture the history of the river from the diverse perspectives of ecology, geography, water management, religious devotion, regional politics, and national identity.Betsy was a compassionate, creative, and perceptive scholar of human behavior. We who knew her personally will miss her lively intellect, her kind and generous spirit, her sly sense of humor, and her glorious smile. We all will continue to benefit from her enduring scholarly contributions.