James N. Green is Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Latin American History at Brown University. He is the author of the prize-winning books Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil (University of Chicago Press, 1999; Editora de UNESP, 2000) and We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States (Companhia das Letras, 2009; Duke University Press, 2010), among many other publications and articles. Green is the former Director of the Center of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown University and is currently a Watson Faculty Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies. His research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in Brazil and the Brazilian dictatorship (1964-85). He is writing a biography of Herbert Daniel, a medical student who became a guerrilla fighter in the 1960s, a political exile in the 1970s, and then an AIDS activist. Green is a member of the Commission of Advanced Studies of Memórias Reveveladas (Revealed Memories) project of the Brazilian National Archive and serves as an advisor to the Brazilian National Truth Commission, which is investigating human rights violations committed by the Brazilian state during the dictatorship.

In the conversation below, he talked about the summer-long archival and research project at the National Archives and the larger role it plays in the context of historical research.

How did the idea for this project originate?

When I was doing research for the book We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States in the National Archive in College Park, Maryland, I found many documents that interested me about U.S.-Brazilian relationship that were not directed related to my topic. Nevertheless, I kept copying material because it was so fascinating. Many of my students at Brown University have used these documents in research papers on the dictatorship, and I starting thinking about the need to have all of this material available online for researchers here and in Brazil. I originally applied for a small research grant with the idea of working with two Brown students in Washington, D.C. over the summer as a pilot project to scan and organize documents, in order to then do significant fund-raising for a much more ambitious project.

How has the project evolved since its conception?

After I applied for the grant, I contacted Sidnei Munhoz at the State University of Maringá. He had asked me to contribute an article to an edited collection on U.S.-Brazil relations during the Cold War. He also serves on a sub-committee of the Memórias Reveladas [Revealed Memories] Project of the National Archive, whose mission is to identify archives outside of Brazil that are related to the period of the dictatorship. I knew that he was already acquiring microfilms of U.S. State Department documents from an earlier period and making them available on his university’s website, and I wanted to share the idea of my project with him. He asked me how much it would cost to complete it, and I threw out a figure, which he immediately promised to raise from his university. I then applied for Research Seed Grant from Brown for a half-match, and subsequently received funds from the Office of International Affairs and the Dean of the College to finance the expansion of participation to six full-time Brown students.

How will the project continue to expand and progress?

With a letter from the Brazilian National Archive, we contacted the U.S. National Archive and Record Administration and were delighted that they thought that the project merited their support and collaboration. Our goal is to scan and index as many documents as possible this summer, and then raise additional funds to organize Phase II of the project during the summer of 2014.  This will also be an important moment for our research collaboration with the Brazilian National Truth Commission because they will be writing their final report, which is due in December 2014.

Who will use the State Department documents scanned and indexed by the students?

This might seem like an exaggeration, but I predict that thousands of Brazilian undergraduate students will access the websites at Maringá or Brown over the next decade to do research on the period of military rule in Brazil. This is a topic that younger generations of students are anxious to understand, and there is particular interest in U.S.-Brazilian relations during this period.  In addition, I expect that tens of dozens of U.S. researches, as well as scholars from other countries, will access this material, as it will be a complete mirror of the archive, and will allow people to do systemic research without having to come to College Park, Maryland.

What is most exciting about this project both personally for you and on a larger scale?

When we met with members of the U.S. National Archive and Records Administration I realized that we had proposed a new model of collaboration among universities, scholars, students, and the archives. We are providing an important service for document preservation and the expansion of access of this material to a significantly larger public. It means that many more Brazilians will have access to U.S. State Department documents that will help them understand the complex relationship between the two countries.

At the same time, our work with the Brazilian National Truth Commission is extremely important for me. I have friends who were arrested and tortured during the military regime. One of the missions of the National Truth Commission is to seek out information about the whereabouts of those who were killed or disappeared. The Commission has also been tasked with clarifying other important questions. Our research in the United States, along with the efforts of many others, will hopefully contribute to a much more comprehensive understanding of the process that led to twenty-one years of authoritarian rule, as well as the reasons why the regime stayed in power for two decades.