Foreseeing the big scientific questions: a special gift of Wagley's

Emilio Moran

doi:10.1590/1981-81222014000300005

Abstract

In this paper I review my experience as Charles Wagley's Ph.D. student and later as a faculty colleague at the University of Indiana. In addition to his deep humanism and personal warmth, Wagley also had an uncanny ability to foresee important emerging issues in social sciences, especially within Latin American and Brazilian Studies. With his flexible, personable style he found ways to direct students and colleagues towards the issues he considered important, and which later became truly major issues for these fields. For example, he helped to create the interdisciplinary field of Latin American Studies while in New York, focused on Latin American race relations while at Columbia University, and created the Amazonian Studies program at University of Florida with its focus on impacts of development and infrastructure projects. He helped create scholarship programs for such studies through the Title VI mechanism. Through all of his scholarly contributions, Wagley led by inspiring with a rare social consciousness and a deep concern for the human costs of social and economic change

Highlights

In this paper I review my experience as Charles Wagley’s Ph.D. student and later as a faculty colleague at the University of Indiana
I will discuss Wagley’s pioneering contributions to the field of area studies, his recognition of the importance of race as a social concept in Latin America, and his careerlong focus on the Amazon. During his career in New York at Columbia University, Wagley was a major player in the creation of title VI funding for area studies in general and Latin American studies in particular
After World War II he recognized the importance of deeper United States (US) knowledge about the rest of the world and acted as a leader in the creation of the field of interdisciplinary Latin American Studies

Summary

Introduction

In this paper I review my experience as Charles Wagley’s Ph.D. student and later as a faculty colleague at the University of Indiana. In addition to his deep humanism and personal warmth, Wagley had an uncanny ability to foresee important emerging issues in social sciences, especially within Latin American and Brazilian Studies.

Results

Conclusion