Pela universidade flutuante: Eunice Weaver na apropriação, circulação e produção de políticas de combate à hanseníase

Abstract

To interpret how Eunice Weaver’s participation in the Floating University — an international educational project carried out between 1928 and 1929 aboard a transatlantic ship — contributed to the appropriation, circulation, and production of policies to combat Hansen’s diasease in Brazil is the objective of this investigation. By interweaving institutional documents, official discourses, journalistic materials, and travel records from different subjects who participated in the journey, the study examines how, from that experience, Eunice Weaver supported projects of care and protection that also served sanitary control, segregation practices, and the institutionalization of the compulsory isolation of people affected by Hansen’s diasease. By investigating the trip not only as a physical displacement, but as a device for training, updating knowledge, and legitimizing practices, the research highlights how international pedagogical experiences can both reinforce values and models from the culture of origin and produce new repertoires of social intervention, with lasting effects on public policies and the history of health in Brazil.