Vanessa Massuchetto holds a PhD in Law, specialized in Legal History, by the Federal University of Paraná with a research exchange at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon, and a period as a guest at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory. Currently, she is a member of the research core on History, Law and Subjectivities and of the scientific association Women’s Studies Group (1558-1837): Women’s and gender studies in the early modern period and the long eighteenth century. Her research interests are women’s experiences, agencies and convivialities, gender relations, resistance, confrontation, social conflicts, criminal justice, ecclesiastical justice, and social uses of justice throughout the Modern Period in the Iberian American World.
Project: Women’s Experiences and Moral Crimes in Portuguese South America (1750-1800)
Abstract:
The colonial women of Portuguese America, even when inserted into unfavourable contexts, knew how to develop strategies to access behaviours, relations and competences that helped them to realise their interests. Many of these strategies were recorded in judicial processes, which show that these characters often manoeuvred a series of multinormativities circulating in colonial justice to their benefit so that they could live in better conditions. The manipulation of the fluid multinormativities, in turn, was carried out in different ways depending on the outcome, since secular and ecclesiastical institutions were imbued with different forms of approaches as a result of, at least theoretically, being directed by different objectives. By focusing on the cases of moral crimes that occurred in the villages of Curitiba and Paranaguá in the second half of the 18th century, the project seeks to understand which social and institutional dynamics influenced the selection of jurisdictions by colonial women. With a focus on women’s experiences and the nuances of the institutional treatment given, the project’s aim is to analyse the means of action and personal strategies in the midst of the convivialities present in the context of each judgement; investigate which treatments they received and which they desired; and finally to understand which behaviours represented confrontation and resistance, and which meant adjustments within the colonial normativities.
Main discipline: Legal History
Selected publications:
• MASSUCHETTO, V. C.. Estupradores (DCH). Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, 2022. (Forthcoming)
• MASSUCHETTO, V. C.. O levar da -honra e virgindade-. Revista Caderno Espaço Feminino do Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero e Pesquisa sobre a Mulher, v. 34, p. 229-254, 2021.
• MASSUCHETTO, V. C.; PEREIRA, L. F. L. . O rei como dispensador da graça: autos de livramento crime e cultura jurídica criminal em Curitiba (1777-1800). Tempo. Revista do Departamento de História da UFF, v. 26, p. 104-123, 2020.
• MASSUCHETTO, V.C.. Breves apontamentos sobre o Iluminismo jurídico-criminal português: rupturas e permanências no contexto de um “Estado” Jurisdicional. Duc in Altum, v. 12, pp 241-274, 2020.
• MASSUCHETTO, V. C.. Cultura Jurídica Criminal e Condição da Mulher na Curitiba do Século XVIII. In: Margarita Torremocha Hernández. (Org.). Mujeres, Sociedad y Conflicto (siglos XVII-XIX). 1ed.Valladolid: Castilla Ediciones, 2019, v. 1, p. 291-310.