Epistemic Eurocentrism in the PCPs of FHEIs: Echoes of African History and Afro-Brazilian Culture in the Labyrinths of Brazilian Higher EducationAbstract
This article analyzes the role of the disciplines History of Africa and Afro-Brazilian Culture in the Pedagogical Projects of History Courses in Federal Institutions of Higher Education. It starts from the hypothesis that these contents are treated as secondary compared to disciplines such as Modern European History, American History, and Brazilian History. I analyze the data through the perspective known as Epistemic Eurocentrism, which highlights the marginalization of subalternized knowledge. The research examined workload, mandatory requirements, syllabi, and periodizations. I argue that such hierarchization reproduces colonial structures and that strengthening these disciplines is essential to confront structural racism in Brazilian academia.
Keywords:
African History and Afro-Brazilian Culture; Epistemic Eurocentrism; Pedagogical Course Projects (PCPs); Federal Higher Education Institutions (FHEIs)
Resumo
Este artigo analisa o papel das disciplinas História da África e Cultura Afro-Brasileira nos Projetos Pedagógicos de Cursos de História em Instituições Federais de Ensino Superior. Parte-se da hipótese de que esses conteúdos são tratados como secundários diante das disciplinas como História Moderna Europeia, da América e do Brasil. Analiso os dados através da perspectiva denominada de Eurocentrismo Epistêmico, que evidencia a marginalização de saberes subalternizados. A pesquisa examinou carga horária, obrigatoriedades, ementas e periodizações. Argumento que tal hierarquização reproduz estruturas coloniais e que fortalecer essas disciplinas é essencial para enfrentar o racismo estrutural na academia brasileira.
Palavras-chave:
História da África e Cultura Afro-Brasileira; Eurocentrismo Epistêmico; Projetos Pedagógicos de Curso (PPCs); Instituições do Ensino Superior Federais (IESFs)
Resumen
Este artículo analiza el papel de las disciplinas Historia de África y Cultura Afrobrasileña en los Proyectos Pedagógicos de los Cursos de Historia en Instituciones Federales de Educación Superior. Parte de la hipótesis de que estos contenidos se consideran secundarios en comparación con disciplinas como Historia Moderna Europea, Historia de América e Historia de Brasil. Analizo los datos desde la perspectiva conocida como Eurocentrismo Epistémico, que destaca la marginalización del conocimiento subalternizado. La investigación examinó la carga horaria, los requisitos obligatorios, los programas de estudio y las periodizaciones. Argumento que dicha jerarquización reproduce las estructuras coloniales y que el fortalecimiento de estas disciplinas es esencial para enfrentar el racismo estructural en la academia brasileña.
Palabras clave:
Historia de África y Cultura Afrobrasileña; Eurocentrismo Epistémico; Proyectos Pedagógicos de Curso (PPCs); Instituciones Federales de Educación Superior (IFES)
Introduction
In recent decades, studies on the History of Africa have come to occupy a prominent place in Brazilian academia, especially since the enactment of Law No. 10,639/2003 (Brazil, 2003), which amended the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education - LDB (Law No. 9,394/1996) (Brazil, 1996). It is interesting to note, however, that the LDB itself, in its Article 26, § 4, indicated that the teaching of Brazilian History should take into account the contributions of "different cultures and ethnicities to the formation of the Brazilian people, especially those of indigenous, African and European origin" (Dias, 2005, p. 57). This has rarely happened in practice. However, the enactment of Law No. 10,639/2003 favored a significant growth in research on the African continent and its peoples, overcoming approaches restricted to the slave trade and incorporating themes aligned with the areas of sociology and anthropology (Ferreira, 2010, p. 74).
Law No. 10,639/2003 represents the materialization of several struggles waged by social movements in Brazil (Coelho & Coelho, 2018), frequently inspired by battles undertaken in other contexts, such as those conducted by the American Black Movement (Santos, 2013). Although older studies indicate that there have been few changes in the valuation of Black people in the Brazilian school environment (Ramos, 2015, p. 235), it is noteworthy that, in recent decades, there has been a significant increase in research related to the African continent in the country (Silva, 2018).
For this article, I propose an analysis of the curricula of undergraduate History courses offered by Brazilian Federal Higher Education Institutions (hereinafter referred to as FHEIs). The investigation will be conducted through an examination of the Course Pedagogical Projects (CPPs)1. The choice to analyze undergraduate History courses is justified by the fact that this training aims primarily to equip professionals capable of both producing historical knowledge and teaching it (Ferreira, 2015, p. 106). Therefore, their work directly impacts society, especially since they are involved daily in the school environment, playing a fundamental role in building students' historical consciousness.
I hypothesize that the analyzed CPPs (Pedagogical Course Projects) reflect the collective thinking of the faculty and student representatives of undergraduate programs at the time they were developed (Mesquita & Soares, 2012, p. 242), thereby expressing these academic communities’ understanding of what constitutes African History and Afro-Brazilian History and Culture, as well as the importance attributed to these subjects within the CPPs. However, as I will attempt to demonstrate, African History courses are often secondary to others, especially those dedicated to the study of Brazilian and American History, with particular attention to a supposed Western influence on the rest of the globe, from the advent of European Modernity, suggesting that the CPPs of Brazilian Higher Education Institutions have a more Eurocentric appeal, as they describe Western expansion over Africa, the Americas, and Brazil, falling into what I call Epistemic Eurocentrism, which will be presented later.
Regarding subjects focused on teaching Afro-Brazilian History and Culture, a process of invisibility persists. These curricular components are generally restricted to elective courses and, in most cases, are addressed transversally. Therefore, they occupy a marginal position in the curricular matrices of a significant portion of History undergraduate programs in the CPPs (Pedagogical Course Projects) of the surveyed FHEIs (Federal Higher Education Institutions).
I must mention, at this point, the criticism made by Petrônio Domingues (2016, p. 358) regarding when the Brazilian Black Front (BBF) school was founded in the 1930s:
The BBF school was founded as part of a campaign to raise awareness and mobilize the "colored population." However, it did not systematize a more comprehensive educational policy proposal. In fact, it did not methodically forge a pedagogical project centered on the issue of Black people, nor did it develop specific teaching materials, an alternative curriculum, or focus on a completely innovative teaching practice. Even so, it can be assumed that it was from this school that some ideas about what Black education should be like in Brazil began to circulate. Although in a somewhat unarticulated way, the Black Front leaders were precursors in criticizing both the prejudiced dimension of school content and the discriminatory way in which teachers and educational institutions interacted with Black students. But we must not commit anachronism: the issue of an interethnic and multiracial pedagogy was not raised in the 1930s.
Similarly, I observe in the current context the recurrence of an analogous phenomenon: efforts aimed at raising awareness that do not translate into pragmatic actions capable of promoting structural changes in the curriculum. As a result, the predominance of Eurocentric curricular components persists, in contrast to the marginalization of content related to Africa and Afro-Brazilian culture2.
As the path to be followed in this article, I chose to begin with a brief discussion of the concepts and sources; secondly, on the number of courses in African History and Afro-Brazilian Culture in undergraduate History programs at higher education institutions; and, lastly, I will investigate the data extracted from the sources, collating them with the descriptions of the course syllabi included in the curricular projects. With this, I seek not only to outline the methodological path of the research, but also to highlight the relevance of the topic to the educational field and to the construction of a pluralistic epistemology.
Concepts, methods and sources
For this study, it is necessary to present the concepts, authors, and sources that underpin the research. The definition of Epistemic Eurocentrism is based on the studies of Jurjo Torres Santomé (1995), Sueli Carneiro (2005), Nilma Lino Gomes (2012), José P. Castiano (2010), and Samir Amin (2009), whose analyses were compared using the CPPs of the FHEIs.
Santomé (1995, pp. 160-172) points to a “Fordist structure” in school models, which limits liberating practices and silences cultures in curricula. To overcome it, he advocates an emancipatory curricular project, which I also propose for the CPPs (Course Pedagogical Projects), with goals and cultural content aimed at the critical socialization of oppressed subjects.
Sueli Carneiro (2005, pp. 96-97), when discussing epistemicide (a concept derived from Boaventura de Sousa Santos), shows how the knowledge production of subaltern groups is delegitimized, nullifying their rationalities and imposing the knowledge of the dominator as the only legitimate path.
In this sense, Nilma Gomes (2012) proposes the decolonization of curricula, connecting knowledge and social movements in a democratic society. For the author, access to higher education should consider marginalized subjects as producers of knowledge, generating emancipatory proposals.
Mozambican José Castiano (2010) states that the problem is not the absence of African content in Western academia, but its objectification: cultures and knowledge are filtered through colonial epistemologies, transforming the African subject into an object.
Finally, Samir Amin (2009, pp. 166-167) describes how the dominant culture of Eurocentrism constructed the notion of an eternal and homogeneous West, imagined as continuous and singular since its supposed origins. This arbitrary and mythical elaboration was matched by the equally artificial construction of an “Other” - the Orient, for example - likewise grounded in mythical foundations. The result of this Eurocentric perspective is the widely disseminated narrative of Western history as a linear progression that begins in Ancient Greece, passes through Rome, feudal Christian Europe, and culminates in capitalist Europe-a narrative that has become one of the most accepted and popular interpretations.
In this process, elementary school textbooks and common sense play a role as significant as - or even more influential than - scholarly academic productions in constructing and disseminating this vision, thereby helping to legitimize the idea of a continuous ancestry of European culture and civilization.
It is from this perspective that I propose the Epistemic Eurocentrism of African History and Afro-Brazilian History and Culture. All the analyzed CPPs (see footnote #1) refer to Law No. 10.639/03, but the disciplines appear only on the “surface” of the curricular matrices. The discipline of African History emerges as an auxiliary, without thematic or theoretical autonomy, tacitly reaffirming the silencing of Black cultures. The condition of Afro-Brazilian History and Culture is revealed to be even more serious considering its incipient, or even absent, presence in the curricular components.
Epistemicide, here, occurs not through explicit exclusion, but through marginalization, as if the content served only to legitimize a “greater” Western knowledge. Thus, even in the face of Gomes' (2012) predictions for emancipatory curricula, domination persists, displacing Africa to the position of an object within a Western narrative. Given this, Epistemic Eurocentrism is an analytical approach that operates as the practice of marginalizing African knowledge in curricula, treating it as accessory to the history of European expansion or the formation of the Americas and Brazil.
Finally, it is necessary to define what CPPs are. As a rule, CPPs are the expression of the collective will of the academic community that elaborated it, reflecting political disputes, ruptures, and continuities. As Veiga (1998, p. 11) points out, the CPPs are articulated with the socio-political aspirations of their time, and they are documents laden with intentionality. It was precisely in this spirit that the MEC (Ministry of Education) defined what should be included in the CPPs of History courses (Brazil, 2002).
Among the "general skills and abilities" to be developed, I highlight the following excerpt: "To problematize, in the multiple dimensions of the experiences of historical subjects, the constitution of different relations of time and space" (Brazil, 2001, p. 8). In other words, two years before Law No. 10.639/03 was enacted, the Ministry of Education itself already understood the need to undertake an understanding of the multiple times and spaces of societies outside the so-called West and to exalt the knowledge coming from these groups, which would lead to the analysis of multiple cosmogonies, diverse worldviews, and varied ways of conceiving the cosmos itself.
Furthermore, the Ministry of Education (MEC) shows signs of opposing any form of standardization based on the single, universal viewpoint of the West, which, ultimately, seems to somehow oppose Epistemic Eurocentrism.
It is necessary to add a brief addendum to this discussion. The curricula of undergraduate History courses can be schematically organized into different formative axes, such as: Theory, Teaching, Time, Space, and Ethnic-Racial Relations, in addition to a residual set of "other" disciplines. In the axes of Theory, Teaching, and Ethnic-Racial Relations, in certain Higher Education Institutions for Family Science (HEIFSs), an articulation is observed between the dimensions of time, space, and the "Non-Hegemonic Epistemologies" themselves (Afro-Brazilian Culture, Indigenous Peoples, Gender, etc.), as occurs in components such as Brazilian Historiography, History of Education in Brazil, among others.
However, with regard to more content-based subjects, a profoundly asymmetrical curricular logic is evident. Subjects organized around a spatial axis, such as the History of Africa and Asia, cover extensive time periods. In contrast, components such as Indigenous History, Black History, or Ethnic-Racial Relations focus on ethnic-racial analyses almost always circumscribed to the Brazilian context, with space treated indirectly and time frequently presented in a diffuse or timeless way.
In contrast, the disciplines within the four-part curriculum are fundamentally structured around a temporal dimension, but operate under a claim to universality that, in practice, corresponds to European history. This curricular organization contributes to the naturalization of an epistemic Eurocentrism, allowing, for example, the uncritical transposition of categories such as "Middle Ages" to other historical contexts, resulting in formulations like "Medieval Africa," while equivalent denominations such as "History of Europe" or "History of the West" do not exist, similar to what occurs with Africa, Asia, and America. Thus, while the four-part contents are presented as universal and neutral, the other historical fields of peoples "beyond Europe/the West" are marked by an explicit geographical location, reinforcing epistemic hierarchies within the curriculum.
Finally, I note that this article surveys the curricula of undergraduate History programs offered by higher education institutions, focusing on the evening shift, as it concentrates the majority of courses. The research was based on documents available online, prioritizing the main campuses due to their greater age and reliability of information.
Given the absence or incompleteness of the Course Project Plans (CPPs), it was necessary to use supplementary documents, including the syllabi, curricular components, and course plans. Some distortions occurred, such as the use of the CPPs for the Bachelor's degree in History from UFAC due to the lack of the document for the teaching degree. Elective courses in African History and Afro-Brazilian History and Culture were excluded due to thematic and nomenclatural diversity, as well as their optional nature, which would hinder the analysis of the overall profile of the offerings, impacting the measurement of the presence of these themes.
The syllabi of subjects that could address Africa in a cross-curricular way, a practice identified in many CPPs, were also not analyzed. One example cited is the possibility that a Modern History course with a more “Afrocentric” focus could help mitigate existing gaps, even if certain distortions remain, such as in the debate over the “African Middle Ages,” which, despite seeking a Global History perspective to understand simultaneities (Reis & Resende, 2022, p. 73), still relies on a Eurocentric temporal framework (Rezende, 2025).
The study also evaluates the teaching hours dedicated to African History and Afro-Brazilian Culture in relation to the total course workload and compulsory subjects, as well as the number of courses offered and their comparison with other areas, based on an adaptation of the classification system of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) (Brazil, 2024). Furthermore, it investigates the chronological frameworks adopted in African History courses, the frequency of terms such as "Slave Trade" and "Imperialism," and the approach to this subject as "History of the Other."
Nonetheless, I must emphasize that UNB was included in the Central-West Region as a representative of the Federal District. The methodological limitations and possible distortions of the data are acknowledged, indicating the need for more in-depth future studies.
Given the above, it is appropriate to present the data considering the theoretical and methodological approaches outlined so far. With this, I will be able to outline a profile of the disciplines of African History and Afro-Brazilian Culture in higher education institutions as a whole, discussing them with the necessary theoretical contributions for their understanding.
Countering stereotypes: the curricula of Brazilian Higher Education Institutions
In this section, I intend to analyze the data collected on the undergraduate History courses at Brazilian Higher Education Institutions (BHEIs), focusing on the discussion of the greater concentrations of African and European disciplines according to Brazilian regions. Therefore, I present the results in Table 1 below, which shows the distribution of the BHEIs' undergraduate History courses by Brazilian regions. In total, 51 undergraduate History courses were identified, with 16 (31.37%) located in the Southeast, 12 (23.53%) in the Northeast, 9 (17.65%) in each of the North and South regions, and only 5 (9.80%) in the Central-West.
The data extracted from Table 1 show a concentration of BHEIs in the Southeast region, which has an average of four institutions per state. Next is the South region, with an average of three per state. The other regions have lower averages: the Northeast has an average of 1.3; the North, 1.28; and the Central-West, including the Federal District, registers the lowest average, with 1.25.
Table 2 shows the distribution of the CPPs (Course Pedagogical Projects) by region and by the year of their elaboration. The publication period of the CPPs covered the years 2005 to 2024, with the majority being from 2017 onwards, accounting for 31 (60.78%) of the 51 undergraduate History courses. Taking 2020 as a parameter, the HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) in the Southeast and South regions have the most up-to-date CPPs, while the North and Northeast regions have CPPs from 2013 to 2018. The Central-West region concentrated its CPPs between 2017 and 2019.
Distribution of undergraduate History course plans, according to Brazilian regions and years of publication
On the other hand, the oldest documents are precisely in the regions that presented the most recent ones: Southeast and South. This may indicate both a recent updating effort and a persistence of previously developed curricular guidelines. In some cases, the coexistence of old and new versions of the CPPs may point to an attachment to the old frameworks. Furthermore, the regional variation suggests inequalities in the pace of institutional adaptation to the new educational guidelines. In general, and based on the data presented in Table 2, it can be stated that the CPPs of Brazilian HEIs date from recent periods.
As I have already highlighted in this article, all the reviewed CPPs (Course Pedagogical Projects) mention Law No. 10.639/03, the DCNERER (National Curriculum Guidelines for the Relevant Education of African History and Afro-Brazilian History and Culture), and Opinion CNE/CP3/2004. Thus, I intuited that the contents of African History and Afro-Brazilian History and Culture should appear in two ways: directly, where these subjects are mandatory in the flowcharts; and indirectly, where the contents would be presented in an optional way, that is, in elective and also transversal subjects. In this article, I will only investigate the mandatory and elective subjects of Africa and Afro-Brazilian Culture, without considering transversality, which often ends up distorting or even "Eurocentrically" focusing on the contents, especially those of Africa, as I have already emphasized.
To understand the real impact of the subjects of African History and Afro-Brazilian History and Culture on the CPPs (Course Pedagogical Projects), I use the exams together with Tables 3 and 4 below.
Table 3 shows the distribution of mandatory subjects by sub-areas of History promoted by CAPES in undergraduate History courses at FHEIs. Thus, in addition to the five sub-areas mentioned, there are four more: Projects and Monographs, Others, Afro-Brazilian History and Culture, and History of Africa, which is not considered a sub-area by CAPES as of the date of writing this article.
In this categorization proposal, America and Brazil, which have other divisions in CAPES, were compressed into just two categories. The "Others" group, in turn, included disciplines such as Anthropology, Archaeology, Environment, Internships, and others that did not fit into the other divisions but had a huge weight in the CPPs (Course Pedagogical Projects), constituting the largest group, especially since they are Bachelor's degrees; out the total of 1,963 mandatory disciplines found, 848 were allocated to this taxonomy, which represented 43.20%.
The courses dedicated to the content about the African continent and Afro-Brazilian culture, on the other hand, have the lowest numbers, 65 and 26 respectively. Thus, except for the courses dedicated to the History of Science, which appear four times, two of them in the South of the country, History of Africa and History and Afro-Brazilian Culture have negligible impacts on undergraduate History degree programs in Brazil. In fact, History of Africa represents almost half of Ancient and Medieval History, only slightly more than 36% of Modern and Contemporary History, slightly less than a third for each of the categories of Theory and Philosophy of History and Brazil, and half of those dedicated to America.
Looking at the FHEIs (Federal Higher Education Institutions) in History undergraduate programs by region, and excluding the History of Science category for the reasons mentioned, I notice that Afro-Brazilian Culture has the lowest weight, with Africa being the second lowest. Incredibly, even when the two contents are added together, the result is still lower than all other categories, including those for projects and monographs.
Furthermore, if we add together the courses associated with the four-part division -those that identify studies of Europe or the West in general (or, at least, are expected to do so) - the total reaches 306. By comparison, African History and Afro-Brazilian Culture combined account for only 29.74% of that number (91 courses). I would also add that, considering that Theory and Philosophy of History, America and Brazil are disciplines that can include Western authors and thinkers, more than those from Africa or Afro-Brazilians and indigenous peoples, I could, using only the data from Table 3, affirm that there is an epistemic Eurocentrism in Brazilian academia, since the content is geared towards analyses of Europe.
When I analyze the distribution of Africa and Afro-Brazilian Culture by region, comparing the data in Table 1 with those in Table 3, it appears that although the Southeast had a higher number of federal higher education institutions in Brazil, the Northeast and the Southeast have the same number of courses related to Africa (18), followed by the South, North, and Center-West regions, with 13, 12, and 4 respectively. In terms of Afro-Brazilian History and Culture, the North region has one more course than each of the other administrative divisions of Brazil, with 6 compared to 5.
Conversely, by removing the category "Others," which is a cluster of disciplines, I realize that the disciplines aimed at the four-part division are superior even to that of Brazilian History in almost all regions, except for the North.
Regarding the History of Africa and Afro-Brazilian Culture in the North region, out of 363 subjects, 48 (13.22%) refer to the four-part system and 18 (4.96%) are those related to Africa and Afro-Brazilian Culture; out of a total of 455 subjects in the FHEIs of the Northeast, 71 (15.60%) are from the four-part system and 23 (5.05%) refer to the African continent and Afro-Brazilians; out of 614 subjects in the FHEIs of the Southeast, 93 (15.15%) are Ancient and Medieval, and Modern and Contemporary, while Africa and Afro-Brazilian Culture combined reached 23 (3.75%); out of a total of 189 subjects in the FHEIs of the Central-West region, 36 (19.05%) are from Europe and only 9 (4.76%) are related to African and Afro-Brazilian content; and lastly, Ancient and Medieval, as well as Modern and Contemporary from the Southern FHEIs, reached 25.73% (88) of a total of 342 subjects, while Africa and Afro Culture combined reached only 5.26% (18).
Thus, in relative terms, the regions with the greatest appeal to European content, in order of magnitude, according to Table 3, are: South (almost 26% or slightly more than a quarter of the curriculum), Central-West (slightly more than 19%), Northeast, with 15.60%, Southeast, which had a percentage of 15.15%, and North, with 13.22%. On the other hand, with regard to more "Afrocentric" content, the following regions stand out, in order of percentages: South (5.26%), Northeast (5.05%), North (4.96%), Central-West, with 4.76%, and Southeast (3.75%).
Based on this data, it seems to confirm that the Southern region, having experienced greater migration from Europe, has a higher percentage of courses dedicated to content from that continent compared to other regions of Brazil. However, this same region has the highest percentage of courses on Africa and Afro-Brazilian Culture. In short, it is a region whose undergraduate History courses at higher education institutions appear to be more Eurocentric than others, but which also show a slightly greater concern with content related to Africa and Afro-descendants.
However, when I compare the two contents by region, I realize that the four-part perspective is almost five times greater than the Afrocentric perspective in the South, Southeast, and Midwest regions; slightly more than three times greater in the Northeast region; and almost three times greater in the North. Thus, the South, Southeast, and Midwest regions, in terms of Eurocentrism, are superior to those of the Northeast and North, although, in general, all regions present this profile.
These hypotheses become even clearer when I analyze the Southern region in particular, as shown in Table 4. The minimum amount of Eurocentric content is 5 subjects, while the maximum of Afrocentric content did not exceed three. Four FHEIs in the region did not present mandatory subjects for Afro-Brazilian History and Culture (UFPR, UFRGS, UFSC, and UFFS). At UFSM, the total Afrocentric content is three times smaller than the Eurocentric content; at UFPR, this proportion reached four times; UFRGS has a proportion of five Eurocentric subjects for each Afrocentric subject; at UFSC it was six times; and at UFFS this proportion reached seven times.
Distribution of compulsory subjects by sub-areas in History (Bachelor's degree) courses at FHEIs - South
What would explain the Southern region having the highest percentages of both Eurocentric and Afrocentric subjects, while the Southeastern region presents the lowest percentages, despite having the largest number of Higher Education Institutions for Science (HEIs) in Brazil? I propose the following hypothetical answer: according to Table 3, the Southeast, although presenting the highest number of African subjects in Brazil, along with the Northeastern region, and having, like the South, a clear concern with the content of American History, Brazilian History, Theory and Philosophy of History, and the four-part division of history, was also the region that presented a very high number of subjects referred to in this article as "Others". This resulted in a decrease in the percentages of the four subjects related to Europe (Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary) in the curricula of the HEIs in the Southeast. In other words, there is a clear distortion of the data caused by the trends in the Southeastern region.
To verify this hypothesis, I present Table 5 below, from which I extracted, from Table 3, the subjects related to the sub-areas of History of Science, Projects and Monographs, and "Others," presenting the relative data (percentages). In this table, which shows the data for the more "content-based" subjects, the perception of the previous tables changes. In all regions, without exception, the area with the highest percentage was History of Brazil, followed by Theory and Philosophy of History and then Modern and Contemporary History, except for the FHEIs in the South, where the percentage of History of the Americas was higher than the latter area.
Regarding the subjects covered by the four-part division, I note that there is a considerable percentage in all regions, with the area of Modern and Contemporary History showing higher numbers than Ancient and Medieval History, both in total and by region separately.
Distribution of compulsory subjects by region for History degree programs at Higher Education Institutions, according to their percentages
In the sum of the two quadripartite sub-areas by region, the Higher Education Institutions of the North presented the lowest percentage of their curriculum (23.30%), followed by the South (29.44%), Southeast (31.64%), Northeast (33.02%), and Midwest (33.96%). Therefore, when we analyze the disciplines typically containing History, it is the Higher Education Institutions of the Midwest that concentrate the highest quadripartite percentages, and not those of the Brazilian South. That same region had the highest percentage in the area of Ancient and Medieval History, 15.09%, and the second highest percentage in relation to Modern and Contemporary History (18.87%), only lower than the Higher Education Institutions of the Northeast. In the case of the South region, the percentages of these two sub-areas were the second lowest, with less dedication to these contents only in the North of the country. Symbolically speaking, the two geographical extremes of Brazil (North and South) have the lowest percentages of Eurocentric content.
The regions of the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) whose curricular plans indicated the highest percentages of African History were: Northeast (8.37%), South (7.11%), Southeast (6.12%), North (5.83%), and Central-West, with only 3.77%. At this point, the stereotypes of migration in Brazil seem to be confirmed, with the Northeast concentrating the largest number of courses on African History. However, the South had the second highest percentage, which, in common understanding, seems contradictory. On the other hand, following the previous analysis on Eurocentrism, the HEIs in the Central-West had the lowest percentage in Africa, not even reaching 4% and being more than twice as low as the Northeast.
However, it was precisely the FHEIs in the Central-West region that showed the highest percentage in Afro-Brazilian History and Culture, with 4.72%, followed by the North (2.91%), South (2.54%), Northeast (2.33%), and Southeast (1.70%). However, it is worth noting in this analysis that, in all the CPPs examined, the content of this area appears transversally, which may have partly impacted the lack of a large number of mandatory subjects.
This may have been the motivation that led the Affirmative Action, Diversity and Equity Advisory Office of the Federal Fluminense University (AFIDEUFF) to formulate the “Manifesto in favor of the implementation of the Ethnic-Racial Relations discipline for all undergraduate programs”. Among the various aspects of the document, I highlight the one below, which fits into the study presented:
The creation of a mandatory subject could even be a driving force for expanding and strengthening the presence of Black, Quilombola, and Indigenous knowledge at the university in the short term. In the medium term, it is beneficial to extend it to other courses as well, since combating racism in our society is fundamental for us to truly have a democratic country. Current data indicates that 25.19% of the courses offered by UFF are teacher training programs, a fact that reveals the urgency of implementing the subject of Ethnic-Racial Relations so that, in the near future, it will be possible to reach other courses and guarantee, in fact, an anti-racist education with substantial competence to fulfill its function of transforming society, a commitment reiterated in its Institutional Development Plan (IDP) (AFIDEUFF, 2025, p. 2).
Thus, it is not merely a matter of inserting content dissociated from a social need or of making curricula less Eurocentric, but of providing future teachers with tools capable of producing resistance against Brazilian structural racism, as Mauro Cezar Coelho and Maria de Nazaré Baía Coelho (2018) state.
Returning to the data from Table 4, in the combined analysis of African History and Afro-Brazilian History and Culture as mandatory subjects, the following stand out in order of highest percentages: the Northeast, with 10.70%; the South, which obtained 9.65%; the North, reaching 8.74%; the Central-West, which was slightly lower than the previous region (8.49%); and the Southeast, which reached 7.82%. Initially, the data demonstrate that the Southeast Brazilian Higher Education Institutions have more Eurocentric curricula than those of other Brazilian regions. Before presenting this discussion, I would like to discuss the teaching hours of the curricula.
Table 6 below aims to discuss the weight of the teaching hours for African History and Afro-Brazilian History and Culture in relation to the total and mandatory teaching hours in the curricula of Brazilian higher education institutions. The results are surprising in some aspects. First, Africa represented only 2.45% of the total teaching hours and 2.85% of the mandatory teaching hours. Afro-Brazilian History and Culture had a much lower percentage, with 0.93% and 1.08%, respectively, for the total and mandatory teaching hours of national History degree curricula. When added together, they reach a little over 3% in terms of total teaching hours and almost 4% of the mandatory teaching hours. In other words, the number of hours that future History teachers have for these subjects is very low when compared to Ancient and Medieval History, for example.
In the regional analysis, the Northeast shows the highest percentages for African History in total terms, as well as in compulsory subjects (3.23% and 3.62%, respectively), followed by the South region with 2.70% and 3.44%; the North, which obtained 2.29% of the total workload and 2.65% of the compulsory subject load; the Southeast region had 2.09% and 2.42%; and the Central-West region, whose percentage of Africa in the total workload was 1.62% and 1.85%. Although the proportion of quadripartite and Eurocentric subjects in the South region is higher than in others (see Tables 3 and 4), in terms of class hours and quantity, it is the region with the second highest percentage of Africa.
Regarding the content related to Afro-Brazilian History and Culture (Table 6), the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Central-West region, which presented the lowest percentages of African History, stood out from the other regions, with a percentage of 1.93% for the total and 2.20% of the mandatory workload. The North region had percentages of 1.12% and 1.29%; the HEIs in the South of Brazil had 1.01% and 1.29%, respectively, for total and mandatory workloads. In other words, in terms of mandatory Afro-Brazilian History and Culture subjects, the North and South regions presented identical percentages, which can be explained by the number of hours that the South region dedicates to this content in certain subjects, since, as seen in Table 3, the North of Brazil has more subjects on this content than the South region. The Northeast region, in turn, had the following percentages for the total and mandatory workloads, respectively: 0.81% and 0.91%. The Southeast region, with the lowest percentages among all Brazilian regions, reached 0.54% and 0.62%.
Thus, it is observed that the teaching hours allocated to the subjects of Africa and Afro-Brazilian Culture remain extremely reduced in undergraduate History courses in Brazil. This scenario highlights the persistence of a curricular structure that has changed little in the CPPs of FHEIs in recent years (Coelho & Coelho, 2018).
In quantitative terms, the average number of hours dedicated to these subjects represents less than 3.5% of the total courses. To illustrate, in a degree program with 3,200 class hours, only about 108 hours are jointly dedicated to the study of Africa and Afro-Brazilian culture. This proportion reveals a significant discrepancy, especially considering the historical and sociocultural context of the country, whose identity formation is intrinsically linked to African heritage. In a nation that aims to confront its colonial past and promote historical reparations, such curricular marginalization of this knowledge is particularly worrying and highlights epistemic Eurocentrism.
On the other hand, when analyzing the elective courses within these disciplines, I conceive another possible conclusion. Before making these considerations, I must inform you that the data in Table 7, below, are underestimated due to a number of factors, such as, for example, many of the elective courses have titles such as "Special Topics in History," with general syllabi.
In other cases, the syllabus would be variable, that is, the teacher would choose what to present; some courses often opted to include only the word "Elective," without any syllabus description; and there were also the CPPs (Course Pedagogical Projects) that presented the workloads allocated to elective subjects, but did not describe the titles or the syllabi. Therefore, the data in Table 7, although serving as a sample for the hypothesis I will present, do not reflect the realities of courses at Brazilian higher education institutions.
Distribution of elective courses by sub-areas of African History and Afro-Brazilian History and Culture, according to the regions of the country.
According to Table 7, there are 81 elective courses in African History and 34 in Afro-Brazilian History and Culture, totaling 115. Among those dedicated to content about the African continent, I highlight that the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Southeast region presented the largest number of courses, with 33, which, when compared with Table 4, seems to indicate a significant number of electives, emphasizing the cross-cutting nature of this content. Institutions in the Northeast also stand out in this regard, with 25 courses. In other words, there is a large amount of content about the African continent in the HEIs of this region, especially when we include the mandatory courses. In the other Brazilian regions, the Central-West had 9 elective courses in African History, and the North and South had 7 each.
Regarding the distribution of elective courses by region in the sub-area of Afro-Brazilian History and Culture, I would like to point out that the Higher Education Institutions in the Northeast had the largest number of courses (14), closely followed by the Southeast, with 10. The North region had 7, the Central-West, 3, while for the South region, I did not find any elective courses on this content.
These data, when compared to those in Tables 3 and 5, may indicate that, more than African History, Afro-Brazilian Culture in the CPPs (Course Pedagogical Projects) is typically transversal. It likely appears indirectly in the sub-areas of Brazil, Education, and others. These data reinforce, in a way, the curricular silences and the struggles yet to come regarding African History and Afro-Brazilian History and Culture in Brazil, since the contents of the CPPs still suffer from epistemic Eurocentrism.
I would also add the reflection made by Mauro Cezar Coelho and Wilma de Nazaré Baía Coelho (2021, p. 15): “The absence of effective reflections and approaches to EERR [Education of Ethnic-Racial Relations] has deleterious consequences. Since they are related to discussions about Difference and Diversity, they participate, as we have already pointed out, in the processes of identity construction - both individual and collective”.
Given this quote and the data collected, the conclusion I reach in this subtitle is that, in general, African History and Afro-Brazilian History and Culture are subjects that are timidly presented in the curricula of Brazilian higher education institutions. The Southern region, considered to have suffered the greatest migration from Europe, is actually one of the most prominent in terms of mandatory subjects in the national scenario, while the Central-West region presented the least amount of data. This indicates that the old stereotype that the Southern states of the country have greater affinities with European studies and analyses is not entirely feasible. On the other hand, however, the curricula, in general, are still quite Eurocentric. Higher education institutions suffer from the Western legacy of thinking about History more from the perspective of the victors. Before drawing further conclusions, it is necessary to examine the subjects of African History more deeply.
Which Africa are we talking about?
Since the creation of the Africa Working Group (GT) in 2011 by the National Association of History Professors (ANPUH), there has been much discussion about what constitutes African History in Brazil. At the time, the main challenge was defining the exact scope of the GT's activities and nomenclature (Rezende, 2022, pp. 21-30). Fourteen years later, it does not seem that the discussion has been resolved, nor is there a peaceful consensus on the definition of Africa in Brazilian academic circles. It is with this investigative spirit that I will now examine the analyses of the Course Pedagogical Projects of the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), based on some data collected and some examples of course outlines.
The intention in this part of the article is to deepen the understanding of the "place of African History" in undergraduate courses. To that end, I present Table 8 below, which shows the accompanying disciplines for the same phases (periods) in which African History is found. Before the analysis, I would like to highlight that four Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) did not include this discipline in their curricular projects (CPPs): UFRPE, UFABC, UFG, and UFMS.
Distribution of mandatory accompanying subjects in African History by sub-areas in History (Bachelor's degree) courses at Higher Education Institutions, according to Brazilian regions
In general, following Ilma Veiga's (1998) presentation regarding CPPs (Course Pedagogical Projects), I consider that the periodization of a discipline is connected to two singular points: 1 - each period is characterized by the idea of progression of knowledge. Therefore, the initial phases stand out for their disciplines considered basic content, while the final phases demand prior knowledge acquired in previous phases and, therefore, have a more in-depth character; and 2 - although each discipline has its theoretical-methodological autonomy, it is conceived within a phase as dialogical in relation to others, whether in the sense of an eschatological time and/or related content.
In this way, the phases and accompanying disciplines of the same phase are conceived within a structural logic of the curricular matrices and the CPPs themselves, so that the student is encouraged to understand each phase in a more general way, connecting the disciplines. Thus, in a hypothetical case where a History of Brazil I course, whose syllabus starts from the Portuguese invasion and the entire colonial period, could be related to Modern History, in which the "overseas expansion" occurs.
Regarding the History of Africa courses in Brazilian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), although I haven't included information on whether it's a single subject or multiple subjects, nor have I specified the phases in which they are allocated, the data in Table 8 serve to demonstrate how they were conceived within each undergraduate History degree program. Thus, of the 98 mandatory accompanying African courses in the same phases, 56 (28 for each) are in the Modern and Contemporary sub-areas, and Brazil; America had 25, suggesting it is intertwined with the two previous sub-areas; Ancient and Medieval had 16 courses, allowing me to infer that Africa prioritized the connection with Europe during the aforementioned periods; and Afro-Brazilian Culture had only one, located in the Southeast region.
Figure 1 below shows the diagram referred to in the previous paragraph. Thus, it is possible to imagine that the History of Africa is based on its relationship with Europe, especially in the so-called "ancient world" and the "expansion of the Arab world"; at another point, with the slave trade, connecting the History of America and Brazil; and with 19th-century Imperialism. In other words, there is a clear allusion to the European quadripartite system and to the Histories of America and Brazil.
Arrangement of connections between the accompanying disciplines with content-based characteristics in the same phases of the FHEIs
To verify if my hypothesis translates into something feasible as shown in Figure 1 , I will now work with the course syllabi themselves, but still quantifying them. For this purpose, I created Tables 9 and 10, which are below. Table 9 contains data relating to undergraduate courses that have only one subject on Africa, while Table 10 contains data from undergraduate programs with two or more subjects on that continent.
Chart 1 shows a certain balance in the distribution of syllabi regarding periodizations. The African disciplines that discuss the period between the 15th or 16th centuries and the 21st century had the highest number with 9 FHEIs (Individualized Studies in the Study of the Future), the same number as those referring to the period from Antiquity to the present day. With 7 disciplines, the periodization begins in the 7th century, and those that do not present periodizations had the lowest number (6). Of this last group, 4 are in the Southeast, one for each region of the South and Midwest, and I found none for the North and Northeast.
Periodizations taken from the syllabi of undergraduate History courses at Higher Education Institutions of Science and Technology (HEIs) with one Africa subject.
Of those based on studies of the 7th or 15th (16th) centuries onwards, I must inform that together they totaled 16 FHEIs, which corresponds to 55.17%. Of these, 7 (43.75%) are in the Southeast, 4 (25%) in the North, 3 (18.75%) in the Northeast and two (12.50%) in the South, concentrating between the 15th and 19th centuries, and none for the Central-West region. It is to be assumed that, for these disciplines, the advent of Muslim expansion, as well as European expansion, served as events capable of delimiting the initial periods.
This may have been the case, for example, with the History of Africa course (Code BHU516) at UFVJM, whose syllabus presents "the expansion of Islam" and "Colonialism and Neocolonialism". As an example of the previous periodization, I demonstrate the syllabus for Africa (Code HST 7202) at UFSC: "Study of the different socio-political structures of Africa between the 16th and 20th centuries, the processes of constitution of colonial systems and decolonization, and the forms of didactic-pedagogical approaches".
It is important to note that, except for cases where there are no periodizations and those that covered "all" of the history of the African continent, the FHEIs had a balanced distribution. In the intervals from the 7th to the 21st centuries and from the 15th (16th) to the 21st, there are two FHEIs for the North of the country; two from the Northeast for the first and one for the second; a similar arrangement can be seen in the Southeast region, with three FHEIs for the individual periods; and in the South, which had two in the second interlude and none in the first.
In the distribution of regions by period, the Southeast had at least one IESF (Higher Education Institution for Science) in each of the intervals, but with a slight predisposition for cases where there were no periodizations in the syllabi, with 4 and an equal number for those that are fixed from the 15th century onwards. The North and Northeast also had a balanced distribution of FHEIs; the Central-West presented only two FHEIs, which does not allow me to make further inferences; and the South region, which did not present any courses in the period from the 7th to the 21st century, but which nevertheless had a certain balance in the other distributions.
However, excluding cases where the option was not to include temporal markers in the disciplines and those that attempt to encompass the entire complex history of the peoples of the African continent, what made the other periods important for marking breaking points in the History of Africa? Before seeking an answer, allow me to analyze Table Chart 2, which contains analyses similar to those in Table 1, but referring to undergraduate programs with two or more disciplines in Africa.
In this context, I opted for a tripartite division: Ancient Africa, as reflected in the two categories identified - Africa I and Africa II - although the course titles are often different. I justify this arrangement by my interest in presenting the data in a didactic way, since it would be more complex to present the subjects by their exact titles.
In Chart 2 there are 34 reported cases highlighting the "XIX-XXI" periodization, with 10 (29.41%) allocated to what I have termed Africa II, followed by five cases, also in Africa II, for the 15th-21st century period, in Africa I, from the 7th to the 19th century, and four, in the Africa I discipline for the period from Antiquity to the 18th century. Furthermore, among the Africa I syllabi, there are cases covering periods from Antiquity to the fifteenth century (two courses, one in the Southeast and one in the South), four extending to the eighteenth century (one in the North, one in the Southeast, and two in the South), and one reaching the nineteenth century, located in the Southeast.
Periodizations taken from the syllabi of undergraduate History courses at Higher Education Institutions of Science and Technology (HEIs) with two African-themed subjects
In summary, according to Chart 2, the most frequently repeated cases, in chronological order, are: five use the 7th century as a temporal marker, seven use the 15th century, and 22 use the 18th and 19th centuries as a temporal demarcation. These data, added to those taken from Table Chart 1, reach 12 in the 7th century; the 16th century and the following century had 16 undergraduate courses in History; and the 18th century and the following century are the 22 in Table Chart 3.
To further develop this sample, I prepared Chart 3 above, which presents the distribution of Federal Higher Education Institutions (FHEIs) according to the most frequently identified periodizations and their respective regions. In this table chart, I inform readers that some FHEIs appear more than once, since many adopted two of these temporal markers in their courses, especially when the institution offers two or more African History subjects. Thus, among the 47 occurrences identified, there are 3 FHEIs in the North, 4 in the Northeast, 1 in the Center-West, 3 in the Southeast, and 1 in the South, totaling 12 cases whose syllabi use the seventh century as a chronological marker. For the 15 syllabi that examine Africa up to and/or from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 2 are in the North, 3 in the Northeast, none in the Center-West, and 5 each in the Southeast and South regions. Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there are 20 cases, of which 5 are in the North, 6 in the Northeast, 2 in the Center-West, 3 in the Southeast, and 4 in the South.
The data extracted from tables 1, 3 and 3 allow me to affirm that there is a tendency for Brazilian Higher Education Institutions to use the 7th, 15th or 16th centuries and the 18th century onwards as temporal markers in the syllabi of African History courses, relating them to the European quadripartite history, the History of America and Brazil, and to the Muslim expansion, i.e., to the "History of the Other" and not to that of Africa.
To assess whether this assertion holds true, I will begin by analyzing the syllabi of selected undergraduate History programs from this point onward, seeking to determine whether a certain degree of epistemic Eurocentrism is present. I will focus on programs that offer two or more History courses, since, a priori, their temporal demarcations may be more clearly defined.
Starting with the Northern region, UNIFESSPA offers the course "History of African Societies," with 34 hours of instruction, in the second semester, and "Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa," with an identical workload, in the fifth semester. The syllabus for the first, in addition to the periodization from the 7th to the 16th centuries, includes: "Islamic conquest, trade, and slavery." The second, whose title speaks for itself, has as its framework "The impact of imperialism on the African continent. [...]. European expansion on the continent between the 19th and 20th centuries."
In both disciplines, there is a clear allusion to the arrival of the "other" as an important factor in the analysis of the African continent. Although "History of African Societies" includes analyses of the societies of "Sub-Saharan Africa," Southern Africa, Central Africa, etc., the temporal marker is the arrival and expansion of Arab Muslims on the continent.
At UFOB, located in the western part of the state of Bahia, there are also two Africa-related courses: Africa I, in the 3rd semester, with 60 hours, and Africa II, in the eighth semester with the same workload. The first course has the following syllabus: “Study of the historiography and history of Africa between the 7th and 18th centuries. The emergence of African civilizations, states, and societies. The slave trade, miscegenation, and the formation of new sociocultural spaces.” In other words, there is no direct reference to Muslim expansion, although the 7th century is used, but there is an indirect connection to it in the section on “emergence of civilizations, states, and societies.” Furthermore, as with UNIFESSPA, there is an emphasis on the slave trade.
In Africa II, among other things, the syllabus includes "European encroachment and African resistance: colonialism, the actions of African elites [...]". In short, and again, the Africa II course, or its equivalent, is defined by the beginning of European imperialism on the African continent.
For the Central-West region, the only HEI (Higher Education Institution) I could find with two courses on African History was UFGD, which has the following courses: “History of Africa” in the 4th semester, which includes “Conquest and colonization of Africa by Europeans” and “Slavery and trafficking”; and “History of Contemporary Africa and Asia”, in the eighth semester, whose syllabus alludes to the two continents from a comparative and post-colonial perspective. In both courses, in short, the factual references are also the slave trade and colonization, although in the second course it is the post-colonial period.
In examining the courses that use the fifteenth century as a temporal marker, I will focus on the remaining regions-the Southeast and the South-through the following federal higher education institutions (FHEIs): UNIFAL and UFPR. UNIFAL, located in the Southeast region, offers the courses History of Africa I and History of Africa II, each comprising 60 hours and scheduled for the fourth and fifth semesters, respectively. In Africa I, in addition to the content on teaching, there is "Historiography and sources relating to African societies of the central savannas, the western forest and the Sahel". By inference, the Africa II discipline, in which it is described "Historiography and sources relating to the contact of African societies with Euro-American agents", uses the 7th century as the beginning of the analysis, as well as the slave trade. However, I admit that my definition is debatable. Be that as it may, in the first case, there is no clear allusion to Muslim expansion; In Africa II, there is indeed a reference to the contact among Europe, the Americas, and Brazil with the African continent as an element that marks the chronological beginning of the discipline.
At UFPR, the two courses have the same titles as those at UNIFAL, with Africa I being titled: “Study of African societies in the formation of the ancient, Indian and Muslim world, based on historiography and material and textual documentation.” Whereas the syllabus for Africa II is as follows: “Study of African societies from the contact with Europe, America, and Asia, based on historiography and material and textual documentation.” In the case of the History of Africa courses at UFPR, the allusion to the “History of the Other” is clear and noticeable. In Africa I, it seems to be the participation of African societies in the formation of “other worlds” and not a History of Africa itself, and in Africa II, “from the contact with Europe, America and Asia.”
From the results presented, I can draw some conclusions. Firstly, although there is legislation that makes the content of African History mandatory in Higher Education Institutions, it appears very timidly in History degree programs. Secondly, however much we have advanced in terms of decolonial, post-colonial, counter-colonial discussions, etc., the praxis of the curricula of the Course Pedagogical Projects (CPPs), analyzing only African History, without addressing other content such as Gender, Indigenous Peoples of Brazil and others, are still very attached to the so-called hegemonic cultures, as Santomé (1995, p. 161) and Gomes (2012, p. 102-103) affirm.
These speculations result in rigid, content-focused curricula that disregard the social transformations already consolidated in Brazil. Thus, counter-hegemonic processes do not translate into an increase in content related to African studies in higher education institutions, either in terms of the number of subjects or the allocated teaching hours. Reflecting on what has been presented so far, I realize that the curricular frameworks present a certain dystopia, especially in light of the struggles of social movements in the country.
In short, and firstly, it is necessary to recognize that the African discipline in the FHEIs (Federal Higher Education Institutions) appears as an auxiliary discipline, inserted within the context of contact with Europe, the Americas, and Brazil, via the slave trade in the modern period. Secondly, there is an emphasis on presenting the African continent through two of the three aspects criticized by Achille Mbembe (2001): the slave trade and imperialism. Finally, the discipline of African History, according to the syllabi analyzed, reveals itself as a support for other sub-areas of History, explaining epistemologies based on contact with Europeans and the Atlantic diaspora.
In general, investigations of the curricular projects of higher education institutions reveal the presence of what Santomé (1995, pp. 166-171) denounces as the hegemony of dominant cultures: curricula that silence or present inadequately the experiences, cosmologies, and "symbolic worlds" of the dominated. Added to this is the integration of this "dominated Other" through their subordination to the dominant, which constitutes "a persistent process of producing intellectual inferiority or denying the possibility of achieving" something for themselves, denying them their full humanity (Carneiro, 2005, pp. 97-99).
In this regard, Felipe Malacco (2025, p. 18) offered some criticisms regarding the division of Africa into Pre-colonial and its framing within the “European maritime empire,” more specifically, the Portuguese. Although the author demonstrates that it is impossible to assert that there was a loss of sovereignty by the African “potentates” before the final decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the following century, the CPPs of the FHEIs seem to affirm exactly the opposite. As Rodrigo Rezende (2025, p. 65), drawing on Subrahmanyam (1997), argues, although certain features of the modern European period can also be identified in other parts of the globe, this does not mean that those regions were regarded as modern, since there was no corresponding “feeling of modernity,” nor did it imply the formation of nation-states or the emergence of nationalism.
Therefore, by stating that Modernity was a global experience, we are acting precisely as agents of imperialism, reaffirming the epistemologies of the Global North, and standardizing time, as well as space, based on the conceptual contributions of the dominators, thus constituting the hijacking of reason through the negation of the rationality of the vanquished and their total cultural assimilation (Carneiro, 2005, p. 97).
As can be interpreted from the discussions generated by Antônio Bispo dos Santos (2015, p. 65), known as Nêgo Bispo, by reaffirming the epistemological creation of the colonizers, even if we admit that there were small differences or that they were not identical to Western ones, but continuing with the nomenclature, we are subjecting ourselves to this extroverted production of knowledge and reaffirming that we are not capable of fostering something for ourselves, i.e., of being counter-colonial. Thus, we end up agreeing with what Santomé (1995, p. 168-169) tried so hard to warn us about: racist practices are the result of the economic, social, political, and cultural history of the society that produced them, which translates into Epistemic Eurocentrism.
Final remarks
The analysis of the results allows me to affirm that, despite the existence of legal provisions that make the teaching of African History and Afro-Brazilian Culture mandatory in undergraduate History programs at higher education institutions, their presence in the curricula is still limited and not very significant. This finding reveals a mismatch between educational legislation and its effective implementation in the curriculum plans, indicating that regulatory compliance has not been accompanied by a consistent pedagogical commitment to the centrality of Africa and Afro-Brazilians as autonomous fields of historical knowledge.
Although contemporary academic debate reveals significant advances in decolonial, post-colonial, and counter-colonial perspectives, these discussions are rarely reflected in the curriculum. The analyzed frameworks remain strongly anchored in the Eurocentric basis and historically hegemonic cultures, marginalizing not only the Histories of Africa and Afro-Brazilian Culture, but also other fields equally traversed by power relations, such as gender studies, the knowledge of indigenous peoples, and non-Western epistemologies.
As a consequence, I observe the maintenance of rigid curricula, excessively content-focused and insensitive to social transformations and the historical struggles of social movements in Brazil. Counter-hegemonic processes, although present in academic discourse, do not translate into an expansion of teaching hours or an increase in the number of subjects dedicated to African and Afro-Brazilian studies. This scenario highlights a significant gap between social demands for cognitive justice and the actual structure of undergraduate curricula.
In general, African and Afro-Brazilian history and culture appear in curricular projects as secondary and supporting components, frequently framed in relation to Europe, the Americas, and Brazil, particularly through the trafficking of enslaved people and imperialism. This approach reinforces a representation of the African continent and Black people in the diaspora as passive objects of external action, prioritizing narratives of domination and dependence, to the detriment of valuing their internal dynamics, autonomous civilizations, plural historical experiences, and their own systems of knowledge production.
Thus, I find that the curricula analyzed reproduce an epistemic Eurocentrism that silences or impoverishes the experiences, cosmologies, and symbolic worlds of historically subjugated peoples, contributing to the reproduction of intellectual inferiority and the denial of their full humanity. Overcoming this paradigm requires a profound epistemological reformulation that incorporates African and Afro-diasporic authors, sources, and perspectives, which enable the construction of a truly plural, anti-racist curriculum committed to a decolonial or counter-colonial historical education in History teacher training programs.
As pathways to overcoming curricular epistemological Eurocentrism, this study points to the need to (1) diversify compulsory courses by including and expanding themes such as Africa, Asia, Indigenous peoples, and gender; and (2) condense the quadripartite model into an approach centered on “History of Europe” or similar nomenclatures. The convergence of these actions would allow for a more equitable curriculum, capable of responding to the current sociocultural and technological challenges and needs.
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Peer review rounds:
R1: one invitation; no reviews received.R2: two invitations; two reviews received.
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1
All the Pedagogical Course Projects analyzed in this article can be accessed via the drive: ensinodehistoriadaafrica0@gmail.com. Pedagogical Course Projects, Syllabi and Curricular Components of Higher Education Institutions. Available at this link.
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2
A brief additional comment is warranted. Although not the subject of analysis in this article, it is necessary to highlight that the situation of History teaching directed at the portion of the population that identifies as belonging to the "original peoples" is, in general, even more critical in the curricular projects of the FHEIs examined, when compared to that relating to the black population.
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How to cite this article:
Rezende, R. C. Epistemic Eurocentrism in the PCPs of FHEIs: Echoes of African History and Afro-Brazilian Culture in the Labyrinths of Brazilian Higher Education. Revista Brasileira de História da Educação, 26, e411. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4025/rbhe.v26.2026.e411en
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Funding:
The RBHE has financial support from the Brazilian Society of History of Education (SBHE) and the Editorial Program (Call No. 30/2023) of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).
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Licensing:
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY 4) license.
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Data availability:
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.
